By: greenbackd
Warren Buffett’s favored market valuation metric, market capitalization-to-gross national product, has passed an unwelcome milestone: the 2007 valuation peak, according to GuruFocus:
The index topped out at 110.7 percent in 2007, and presently stands at 111.7 percent. From GuruFocus:
As of today, the Total Market Index is at $ 17624.4 billion, which is about 111.7% of the last reported GDP. The US stock market is positioned for an average annualized return of 2.2%, estimated from the historical valuations of the stock market. This includes the returns from the dividends, currently yielding at 2%.
I’ve seen several arguments for why this time is different, and why it’s not a bubble. I don’t buy it. When we see clear skies, that’s all we can imagine, and so we extrapolate it over the horizon. From Seth Klarman’s latest:
Investing, when it looks the easiest, is at its hardest. When just about everyone heavily invested is doing well, it is hard for others to resist jumping in. But a market relentlessly rising in the face of challenging fundamentals–recession in Europe and Japan, slowdown in China, fiscal stalemate and high unemployment in the U.S.– is the riskiest environment of all.
…
[O]nly a small number of investors maintain the fortitude and client confidence to pursue long-term investment success even at the price of short-term underperformance. Most investors feel the hefty weight of short-term performance expectations, forcing them to take up marginal or highly speculative investments that we shun. When markets are rising, such investments may perform well, which means that our unwavering patience and discipline sometimes impairs our results and makes us appear overly cautious. The payoff from a risk-averse, long-term orientation is–just that–long term. It is measurable only over the span of many years, over one or more market cycles.
Our willingness to invest amidst failing markets is the best way we know to build positions at great prices, but this strategy, too, can cause short-term underperformance. Buying as prices are falling can look stupid until sellers are exhausted and buyers who held back cannot effectively deploy capital except at much higher prices. Our resolve in holding cash balances–sometimes very large ones–absent compelling opportunity is another potential performance drag.
For more on market value-to-GNP see my earlier posts Warren Buffett Talks… Total Market Value-To-Gross National Product, Warren Buffett and John Hussman On The Stock Market, FRED on Buffett’s favored market measure: Total Market Value-to-GNP, The Physics Of Investing In Expensive Markets: How to Apply Simple Statistical Models.
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