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Larry Swedroe: Are Grantham and Hussman Correct About

TedTed
edited June 2015 in Fund Discussions
FYI: The definition of floccinaucinihilipilification is the estimation of something as valueless. It is rarely
used (for obvious reasons) and encountered primarily as an example of one of the longest words in
the English language. I have been waiting for just the right occasion to employ this word, and I finally
found it: Little deserves my use of floccinaucinihilipilification so much as relying on the historical
average of the Shiller CAPE 10 to determine whether stocks are undervalued or overvalued. It can’t
be used to time the market, despite the advice of the gurus who rely on this metric.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.advisorperspectives.com/newsletters15/25-are-grantham-and-hussman-correct-about-valuations.php

Comments

  • "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
    - Irving Fisher: October 21, 1929
  • MJG
    edited June 2015
    Hi Guys,

    Returns are intimately tied to when you leave the investment starting gate. Nobody can consistently predict returns for the next few years. Both GMO and John Hussman have launched signals warning that the Shiller cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio is uncomfortably high. They imply the likelihood of a near-term downturn.

    Indeed if that is the case, the question is how to prepare? I sure don’t have a definite answer. Any answer is likely to be closely coupled to an individual’s specific timeframe, his wealth, his risk profile, and his short-term/long-term need tradeoffs. But history can provide some guidelines to help scope the problem.

    Here is a Link to a nice chart from the Wrapmanager site that displays the S&P 500 pricing history since 1900:

    http://www.wrapmanager.com/wealth-management-blog/did-the-sp-500-reach-all-time-highs-is-there-a-cause-for-concern

    Note that the chart also marks off P/E ratios at critical turning points in the S&P’s storied history.

    As LewisBraham suggests with his post, when the investment battle is exactly joined directly influences annual returns. Some starting dates are especially disastrous. But over time, the historical record demonstrates that even poor starts have been integrated away by the rising tide. Over the very long haul, the precise starting date is not all that significant.

    Here is a Link to a nifty calculator that yields S&P 500 returns with and without dividends reinvested for any input starting and end date. The calculator is from a “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” website:

    http://dqydj.net/sp-500-return-calculator/

    The calculations can be easily completed both with and without inflation adjustments.

    For example, if an investor had the misfortune to invest immediately before the 1929 Crash, his annual return to this month would have been 9.69% with dividends reinvested. If he had been prescient enough to have delayed that initial entry date until April of 1932, his annual return would be at the 11.37% level.

    For those of us old enough to have initiated our investment program immediately after WW II, our annual return would have been 11.01%, again with dividends reinvested. If we have been in the S&P 500 Index over the last 30 years, our reward would have been 10.99%. When you leave the starting gate matters a little, but the returns are impressive regardless of the precise timing.

    I hope you visit the websites that I referenced, and that you find them helpful.

    Best Wishes.
  • It will therefore be interesting to see how DSENX does, especially to someone who now has 35-40% of the total retirement nut in it.
  • MJG, I enjoy your discussions. However, in the real world, the middle class "dollar costs averages" over a working lifetime with ups and downs on the level of contribution due to stuff that happens. For most people, most of the money is invested in later years.
  • What a coincidence, this was Dictionary.com's Word of the day on June 4th It was presented by Wisconsin Badger basketball player Nigel Hayes .

    JimmyfromSunPrairie



  • While I agree with both MJG and Anna that over the truly long-term the timing of your investment hasn't mattered so much (if as Anna rightly points out you can afford to hold for the very long-term), I am more critical not of the timing of investment but the timing of the article's analysis. Every time markets get frothy valuation wise there is always a slew of pundits arguing that for some reason the standard valuation metrics no longer apply, that "this time it's different." This time it's different are famous last words in investing. I remember in 1999 and 2000 when I was covering tech stocks I would read these analyses that claimed that price-earnings ratios no longer mattered as the more important metric was price to "eyeballs" or "price to clicks" on web sites and even back then the absurdity of it made me laugh. The same this time it's different logic applied to home prices and mortgage backed bonds in 2007. Don't home prices always go up and here's why they can keep rising is what I would read. Even Alan Greenspan was arguing that the new derivatives that eventually destroyed the market in 2008 were somehow de-risking it and allowing for valuations to continue to go up above their historical norm. Interestingly enough, there are always pundits on the bottom of crashes who say we're doomed and stocks will never rise again and here's why. These kinds of rationalizations for perpetual froth or fear are always contrarian indicators in my book.
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