Shiller PE ratio – The Burning Platform

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

If you prefer fake news, fake data, and a fake narrative about an improving economy and stock market headed to 30,000, don’t read this fact based, reality check article. The level of stupidity engulfing the country has reached epic proportions, as the mainstream fake news networks flog bullshit Russian conspiracy stories, knowing at least 50% of the non-thinking iGadget distracted public believes anything they hear on the boob tube.

This stupendous degree of utter stupidity goes to a new level of idiocy when it comes to the stock market. The rigged fleecing machine known as Wall Street has gone into hyper-drive since futures dropped by 700 points on the night of Trump’s election. An already extremely overvalued market, as measured by every historically accurate valuation metric, soared by 4,000 points from that futures low – over 20% – to an all-time high. Despite dozens of warning signs and the experience of two 40% to 50% crashes in the last fifteen years, lemming like investors are confident the future is so bright they gotta wear shades.

The current bull market is the 2nd longest in history at 8 years. In March of 2009, the S&P 500 bottomed at a fitting level for Wall Street of 666. In a shocking coincidence, it bottomed on the same day Bernanke & Geithner forced the FASB to rollover like mangy dogs and stop enforcing mark to market accounting. Amazingly, when Wall Street banks, along with Fannie and Freddie, could value their toxic assets at whatever they chose, profits surged. The market is now 240% higher.

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A BIASED 2017 FORECAST (PART ONE)

“The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.” – Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to see a live one hour interview with Michael Lewis at the Annenberg Center about his new book The Undoing Project. Everyone attending the lecture received a complimentary copy of the book. Being a huge fan of Lewis after reading Liar’s Poker, Boomerang, The Big Short, Flash Boys, and Moneyball, I was interested to hear about his new project. This was a completely new direction from his financial crisis books. I wasn’t sure whether it would keep my interest, but the story of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and their research into the psychology of judgement and decision making, creating a cognitive basis for common human errors that arise from heuristics and biases, was an eye opener.

In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgments and make decisions. They are mental shortcuts that usually involve focusing on one aspect of a complex problem and ignoring others. These rules work well under most circumstances, but they can lead to systematic deviations from logic, probability or rational choice theory. The resulting errors are called “cognitive biases” and many different types have been documented.

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SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

I stopped trying to predict markets back in 2008 when the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Wall Street bankers, and their propaganda peddling media mouthpieces colluded to rig the markets to benefit the elite establishment players while screwing average Americans. I haven’t owned any stocks to speak of since 2006. I missed the the final blow-off, the 50% crash, and the subsequent engineered new bubble. But that doesn’t stop me from assessing our true economic situation, market valuations, and historical comparisons in order to prove the irrationality and idiocy of the current narrative.

The proof of this market being rigged and not based upon valuations, corporate earnings, discounted cash flows, or anything related to free market capitalism, was the reaction to Trump’s upset victory. The narrative was status quo Hillary was good for markets and Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric would unnerve the markets. When the Dow futures plummeted by 800 points on election night, left wingers like Krugman cackled and predicted imminent collapse. The collapse lasted about 30 minutes, as the Dow recovered all 800 points and has subsequently advanced another 1,500 points since election day. Krugman’s predictive abilities proven stellar once again.

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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

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).

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DANGEROUS DIVERGENCE

The chart below would appear to be in conflict with the results of a recent Gallup poll regarding stock ownership by Americans. The ratio of household equities to money market fund assets is near a record high, 60% above the 2007 high and 30% above the 1999 internet bubble high. The chart would appear to prove irrational exuberance among the general populace.

In reality, the lowest percentage of Americans currently own stock over the last two decades. With the stock market within spitting distance of all-time highs, only 52% of Americans own stock, down from 65% in 2007. As the stock market has gone up, average Americans have left the market. They realize it is a rigged game and they are nothing but muppets to the Wall Street shysters.

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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.

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IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S OVER

It ain’t over until it’s over. The lows were not reached in 2009. Central bank manipulations and schemes temporarily delayed reaching a true bottom. They have failed. A true secular bottom would be 60% to 80% below today’s levels. Are you prepared for that? That would put the Dow at 7,000 or below. Do you think that is impossible? It was trading at 6,500 in March of 2009. If Bernanke and Geithner hadn’t forced the FASB to allow Wall Street bankers to value their worthless assets as if they were worth 100 cents on the dollar, the 4,000 secular low would have been reached. Now we will pay the price with a far worse scenario. The Fed has shot their load. Fourth Turnings are relentless and nasty.

Are We About to Enter a Secular Bear Market?

Guest Post by Chris Hunter

Source: wikimedia

Today’s chart, from the folks at Crestmont Research, speaks volumes about current investor behavior.

In particular, it calls into question claims being bandied about in the mainstream media that we could be at the start of a new secular bull market in US stocks.

It shows that previous secular (long-term) bear market cycles tend to start when the US stock market is trading on a Shiller P/E – a price-to-earnings ratio is based on average inflation-adjusted earnings from the previous 10 years – of between 20 and 25 (blue-shaded area on the chart).

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