Here’s The Great Big Lie The Bulls Tell About The Stock Market

Guest Post by Mark Hulbert

Bearish P/E ratio calculation carries the most weight

MW-EV318_real_p_20160905141158_ZH

The U.S. stock market’s P/E ratio is telling us in no uncertain terms that stocks are hugely overvalued. Given that, I would have thought the bulls would simply ignore it.

I was wrong.

In fact, many of the bulls have figured out how to torture the data in order to make it appear as though the stock market’s current valuation is in line with historical averages. It’s crucial that you understand what they’re doing so you don’t get seduced by their sweet-talking rationales.

The reason the P/E can seem to tell more than one story is that there is more than one way of calculating it. Though the “P” in the ratio — the price — is fixed, the “E” can vary by a lot. Some analysts focus on trailing 12-month earnings, for example, while others focus on estimated earnings over the coming year. Some calculate the P/E based on earnings as they are actually reported by the companies, while others rely on so-called “operating earnings” (which reflect a firm’s profits after excluding non-operating expenses such as taxes and interest).

Continue reading “Here’s The Great Big Lie The Bulls Tell About The Stock Market”

11 Signs That The U.S. Economy Is Rapidly Deteriorating Even As The Stock Market Soars

Even the doomers like Snyder get it wrong about the “soaring” stock market. Why do people believe false narratives rather than observe the pure, cold hard facts? The S&P 500 closed at 2,064 yesterday. It closed at 2,064 on November 21, 2014. The stock market hasn’t gone anywhere in 18 months. I don’t think that can be classified as “soaring”. It has gone nowhere since the Fed turned off the QE tap. As earnings continue to plunge, with no new QE in sight, and the economy in recession for the average person, the PE ratio of the market approaches unsustainable heights. I’m sure this will end well. Right?

 

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

We have seen this story before, and it never ends well.  From mid-March until early May 2008, a vigorous stock market rally convinced many investors that the market turmoil of late 2007 and early 2008 was over and that happy days were ahead for the U.S. economy.  But of course we all know what happened.  It turned out that the market downturns of late 2007 and early 2008 were just “foreshocks” of a much greater crash in late 2008.  The market surge in the spring of 2008 was just a mirage, and it masked rapidly declining economic fundamentals.  Well, the exact same thing is happening right now.  The Dow rose another 222 points on Tuesday, but meanwhile virtually every number that we are getting is just screaming that the overall U.S. economy is steadily falling apart.  So don’t be fooled by a rising stock market.  Just like in the spring of 2008, all of the signs are pointing to an avalanche of bad economic news in the months ahead.  The following are 11 signs that the U.S. economy is rapidly deteriorating…

THE GREAT CORPORATE EARNINGS FRAUD

“What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don’t need to make smart decisions–if they can get rich making dumb decisions? The incentives on Wall Street were all wrong; they’re still all wrong.” Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Corporate earnings reports for the fourth quarter are pretty much in the books. The deception, falsification, accounting manipulation, and propaganda utilized by mega-corporations and their compliant corporate media mouthpieces has been outrageously blatant. It reeks of desperation as the Wall Street shysters attempt to extract the last dollar from their muppet clients before this house of cards collapses.

The CEOs of these mega-corporations accelerated their debt financed stock buybacks in 2015 as stock prices reached all-time highs and are currently so overvalued, they will deliver 0% returns over the next decade. This disgraceful act of pure greed by the Ivy League educated leaders of corporate America to boost their own stock based compensation is reckless and absurd.

It is proof education at our most prestigious universities has produced avaricious MBAs following financial models and each other like lemmings going over the cliff. Proof of their foolishness is self evident after perusing the chart below. These intellectual giants evidently never learned the basic rule of buying low and selling high in order to make a profitable trade.

Continue reading “THE GREAT CORPORATE EARNINGS FRAUD”

Most. Expensive. Market. Ever

Tyler Durden's picture

Are stocks cheap? Is the ‘Stock-Market’ “priced-for-perfection”? Here is your answer…

The answer is – Yes and Yes-er!

h/t @Not_Jim_Cramer

 

Simply put, the S&P 500’s forward earnings based valuation has never (in the history of the time series) been higher relative to consensus expectations of economic growth… ever.

So next time your “wealth”-taxer suggests you buy-the-f##king-dip, show him the chart above and have him explain how economists “must” be under-estimating growth, because equity analysts are never wrong.


WHY STOCKS WILL CRASH IN TWO CHARTS

“Things always become obvious after the fact”Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”  – Aldous Huxley

The S&P 500 currently stands at 2,126, fractionally below its all-time high. It is now 300% above the 2009 low and 34% above the 2008 and 2001 previous highs. Most people believe this is the new normal. They are comfortably numb in their ignorance of facts, reality, the truth, and the inevitability of a bleak future. When the herd is convinced progress and never ending gains are the norm, the apparent stability and normality always degenerates into instability and extreme anxiety. As many honest analysts have proven, with unequivocal facts and proven valuation measurements, the stock market is as overvalued as it was in 1929, 2000, and 2007.

Facts haven’t mattered, as belief in the infallibility and omniscience of Federal Reserve bankers, has convinced “professionals” to program their high frequency trading supercomputers to buy the all-time high. If central bankers were really omniscient and low interest rates guaranteed endless stock market gains, then why did the stock market crash in 2000 and 2008? The Federal Reserve’s monetary policies created the bubbles in 2000, 2007 and today. There was no particular event which caused the crashes in 2000 and 2008. Extreme overvaluation, created by warped Federal Reserve monetary policies and corrupt Washington D.C. fiscal policies, is what made the previous bubbles burst and will lead the current bubble to rupture.

Benjamin Graham and John Maynard Keynes understood how irrational markets could be over the short term, but eventually they would reach fair value:

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” – Graham

“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” – Keynes

Graham’s quote reflects the difference between hope and reality. This explains the ridiculous overvaluation of Amazon, Shake Shack, Twitter, Linkedin, Tesla, Google, and the other high flying new paradigm stocks. Story stocks soar because the herd believes the stories peddled by Wall Street and company executives. Five of these six stocks don’t have a PE ratio because you need earnings to calculate a PE ratio. In the long run the market will weigh the value these companies based upon profits and cashflow. It is the same story for the market as a whole. There is no question who is to blame for what now amounts to a three headed hydra of bubbles poised to burst.

Continue reading “WHY STOCKS WILL CRASH IN TWO CHARTS”