Monday, February 12, 2024

Are stocks over-valued?

 DISCLAIMER:  If I really knew, I would not be teaching school.

WSJ summarizes five valuation methodologies:

  • Price/Earnings Ratio:  "Analysts are more optimistic about the profit picture for this year and project that earnings among the companies in the S&P 500 will rise roughly 11%. That could offer stocks more room to run."
  • Price-to-book Ratio: "Akin to the price/earnings ratio, the price-to-book ratio divides a company’s stock price by its book value, a measure of total assets minus liabilities. ... It is less useful for tech companies because their growth prospects often aren’t captured on company balance sheets...The S&P 500 is trading at a forward price-to-book ratio of 4.15, above its 10-year average of 3.26 and its 20-year average of 2.76. In comparison, Nvidia’s price-to-book ratio is 22.48."
  • Equity Risk Premium: "Comparing the trailing earnings yield with the 10-year Treasury yield shows that the S&P 500’s equity risk premium is at 0.7 percentage point, near the lowest level in about two decades. (The lower the ratio is, the more expensive stocks are.)"
  • Price/Earnings Growth Ratio: "The PEG ratio is the market’s valuation of a company relative to its earnings prospects. To calculate it, divide a company’s price/earnings ratio over the past 12 months by its projected annual future earnings growth. A PEG of 1 indicates the stock’s price is in line with its growth expectations. ... The S&P 500’s current PEG ratio is 1.48, below its 10-year average of 1.49 and above its 20-year average of 1.35. Nvidia’s ratio of 0.78 makes it look cheap in comparison."
  • CAPE: "At 33.4, the S&P 500’s CAPE ratio is higher than it has been more than 96% of the time since 1881, but it is still well below the prior peaks seen in the late 1990s and 2021."

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