Doug Short | Phil's Stock World

Relying on the valuation methodology made famous by Yale professor Robert Shiller, author of the prescient bestseller Irrational Exuberance, along with some analysis of his own, Doug Short, publisher of dshort.com, raises the question that many bulls seem to be ignoring (or avoiding): "Is the Stock Market Cheap?":

For a more precise view of how today’s P/E10 relates to the past, our chart includes horizontal bands to divide the monthly valuations into quintiles — five groups, each with 20% of the total. Ratios in the top 20% suggest a highly overvalued market, the bottom 20% a highly undervalued market. What can we learn from this analysis? Over the past several months, the decline from the all-time P/E10 high dramatically accelerated toward value territory, with the ratio dropping from the 1st to the upper 4th quintile in March. The price rebound since March has now put the ratio at the top of the 2nd quintile — quite expensive!

A more cautionary observation is that every time the P/E10 has fallen from the first to the fourth quintile, it has ultimately declined to the fifth quintile and bottomed in single digits. Based on the latest 10-year earnings average, to reach a P/E10 in the high single digits would require an S&P 500 price decline below 600. Of course, a happier alternative would be for corporate earnings to make a strong and prolonged surge. When might we see the P/E10 bottom? These secular declines have ranged in length from over 19 years to as few as three. The current decline is now nearing its tenth year.

I would add that the equity market’s low-valuation extremes were hit during what might be described as "turbulent times," including World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the stagflation of the late-1970s. Except for the most delusional of permabulls, it would be hard for anyone to argue that the unraveling that began more than two years ago doesn’t also fit that bill.

While we are waiting to see what the FOMC has to say, I thought I would use this lull to highlight the work of Doug Short, which can be found at dshort.com.

Yesterday, in The Road to Recovery, Doug looked at the profile of recoveries from four strong bear markets. Given the relative ease with which stocks have recovered from their March lows (see chart below), Doug adopts a skeptical tone (which I share) about the path forward for stocks:

For a related post and graphic that puts the above in a different perspective, readers are encouraged to check out Doug’s The “Real” Mega-Bear Quartet 2000.

Road to Recovery

[source: dshort.com]

“Our current market is now 47% above the March 9th low. It has significantly outperformed the 1974 and 2002 rebounds over the equivalent period, and it briefly surpassed the 48% rally in the 1929 Dow. Will it continue to show resilience?”

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