Valuations Across All Stock Markets since 1979

The difficulty I have with a lot of indicators is just that, they are difficult.  If I can't understand what the chart is saying within a few seconds it is usually too confusing and often makes me think you're trying to smash a square peg in a round hole. I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before, but...

CAPE Updates

Below are updates to the CAPE values from our paper Global Value: Building Trading Models with the 10 Year CAPE.    

Damodaran on Valuations

Longish piece from Damodaran... and nice graphic of buybacks and dividends...

Is the S&P 500 at All Time Highs?

If I asked you if US stocks were at all time highs, what would you say?  Yes?  No? What if they are both right? Lots of disinformation spilling around out there.  Below are four series.   S&P 500 Price Return S&P 500 Total Return (including dividends) S&P 500 Price Return after inflation S&P 500 Total Return (including dividends) after inflation The two in bold are at...

What Premium Looks Like

Some have expressed confusion as to the format of premium, so below is a demonstration.  I'm going to do CAPE updates tomorrow then do a 10 part QTAA series for the 2013 paper update next week.  Email in any questions or thoughts... First, a summary: Idea Farm - 2-3 private emails per week, curated by me, public and private newsletters.  Short summary...

Upcoming Travel and Idea Events

Below are a few interesting events in the next few months, I starred the ones that I will be attending for sure (including SF next week and NYC the following) if anyone wants to meetup.  Although hoping to attend all if possible! *Wine Retreat, Sonoma, CA, April 5th Grant's, NYC,  April 9th Real Return Investing with Rob Arnott, Santa Barbara, CA.  April...

Cloning a Cloner (Pabrai Version)

I was watching this Pabrai video below when I saw an interesting slide below that mentioned cannibals (stock buybacks) as well as cloning (following other successful investors).  Tracking his portfolio through 13Fs would have beaten the market by over 7% a year since 2004, not bad!  Though you would have had to sit through a whopping 77% drawdown...ouch. (Source...

Sniffing For Stocks

I had not seen this newish offering until they emailed me recently - the Bloodhound System.  It is a quant stock screener/backtester in the same style as Portfolio123.  It has data back to the late 1980s cobbled together from a number of sources like Thompson, Reuters, and Compustat- best of all it is point in time.  Costs range from...

Stocks and Valuations

Nice article by USA Today on the number of stocks listed declining over the years.  Did you know there are only 3700 stocks in the Wilshire 5000?   I am surprised this doesn't have much of an effect on market cap / GDP but guess it is dominated by the largest of cap stocks?  May run the numbers later...via @AlexRubalcava

“Why do people love dividends? Because they don’t understand either corporate finance or taxes.”

Slowly but surely the world is waking up to the silliness of just focusing on dividends in isolation. (via YCharts (via Aleph) that also has a Net Payout Yield screener.) "Why do people love dividends? Because they don’t understand either corporate finance or taxes." Dumb Idea: Dividends Are Good For You Cashing In On Stealth Dividends