Guest post by Jesse Felder
In my last piece, I openly worried about a few very smart investment minds who have recently attempted to rationalize or justify the persistently high equity valuations we have seen over the past 25 years. I don’t believe that, “it’s different this time.” The modern economy doesn’t have any new magical component that makes a standard stream of cash flows any more valuable than they were 50 or 100 years ago. Nor have investors become generally more intelligent.
I think there’s a very simple explanation for the high stock market valuations since 1990: demographics. From 1981-2000, the baby boom generation came into their peak earning and investing years. Is it just coincidence that during that very same time we witnessed the largest stock market valuation bubble in history? No. In fact, there is a statistically significant correlation between demographic shifts like this and stock market valuations.
A few years ago a pair of research advisors to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco demonstrated this link. They found that demographics (specifically, the ratio between retirement age workers to peak earning and investing age ones) is responsible for 61% of the changes in the price-to-earnings ratio of the stock market over time. Additionally, they found that when their model’s forecast p/e was off by a significant amount the real p/e consistently reverted to their forecast p/e.
Continue reading “How The Baby Boomers Blew Up The Stock Market”
