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We continue to believe that the U.S. economy joined a global recession during the third quarter of this year.
Overlooking Overvaluation
John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
In the day-to-day focus on the “fiscal cliff,” our own concern about a U.S. recession already in progress, and the inevitable flare-up of European banking and sovereign debt strains, it’s easy to overlook the primary reason that we are defensive here: stocks are overvalued, and market conditions have moved in a two-step sequence from overvalued, overbought, overbullish, rising yield conditions (and an army of other hostile indicator syndromes) to a breakdown in market internals and trend-following measures. Once in place, that sequence has generally produced very negative outcomes, on average. In that context, even impressive surges in advances versus declines (as we saw last week) have not mitigated those outcomes, on average, unless they occur after stocks have declined precipitously from their highs. Our estimates of prospective stock market return/risk, on a blended horizon from 2-weeks to 18-months, remains among the most negative that we’ve observed in a century of market data.
On the valuation front, Wall Street has been lulled into complacency by record profit margins born of extreme fiscal deficits and depressed savings rates. Profits as a share of GDP are presently about 70% of their historical norm, and profit margins have historically been highly sensitive to cyclical fluctuations. So the seemingly benign ratio of “price to forward operating earnings” is benign only because those forward operating earnings are far out of line with what could reasonably expected on a sustained long-term basis.
It’s helpful to examine valuations that are based on “fundamentals” that don’t fluctuate strongly in response to temporary ups and downs of the business cycle. The chart below compares historical price/dividend, price/revenue, price/book and Shiller P/E (S&P 500 divided by the 10-year average of inflation-adjusted earnings) to their respective historical norms prior to the late-1990’s market bubble - a reading of 1.0 means that valuations are at their pre-bubble norm.
Note that outside of the bubble-era, major bull market peaks tended to occur with valuations about 30-50% above the historical norm, while bear markets regularly brought valuations back to the historical norm and often well below that level. “Secular” lows generally occurred at valuations about half the historical norm. The 2000 market peak (which the S&P 500 remains below, more than 12 years later) reached valuation multiples more than three times the historical norm.
Presently, on the basis of smooth fundamentals such as revenues, book values, dividends and cyclically-adjusted earnings, the S&P 500 is somewhere between 40-70% above pre-bubble valuation norms, depending on the measure. That’s about the same point they reached at the beginning of the 1965-1982 secular bear period, as well as the 1987 peak. Stocks are far less overvalued than they were in the late-1990’s, but it is worth noting that nearly 14 years of poor market returns have resulted simply from the retreat from those bubble valuations to the current rich valuations. If presently rich valuations were to retreat again to undervalued levels that have accompanied the start of secular bull markets (see 1982 for example), stocks would produce yet another extended period of dismal returns. That prospect certainly isn’t the reason for our present defensiveness, but it’s worth understanding the dynamic that has produced the pattern of market returns we’ve observed over time.
The defining feature of dividends, revenues, book values and the 10-year average of inflation-adjusted earnings (the denominator of the Shiller P/E) is that they are smooth and insensitive to cyclical fluctuations in profit margins over the business cycle. In contrast, standard price/earnings ratios generally seem very reasonable when profit margins are elevated, and seem extreme when profit margins are depressed. Needless to say, that is no small risk for investors who are enamored with seemingly “reasonable” P/E ratios based on forward operating earnings (which assume that companies will indefinitely earn profit margins about 70% above historical norms).
While we prefer to explicitly model the stream of expected future cash flows in our own valuation work, these multiples can be converted into 10-year total return estimates for the S&P 500 using a fairly “model free” rule of thumb, by associating “fair” value with a 10% prospective return. If we write the normalized price-fundamental ratio as “NPF”, and assume that deviations are gradually corrected over a period of 10 years, we have:
Estimated prospective 10-year S&P 500 total return = 1.10/(NPF^.1) – 1
So for example, an NPF of 1.0 corresponds to a 10% 10-year prospective return. An NPF of 0.5, which we might see at the start of a secular bull market, would correspond to a 10-year prospective return estimate of 1.10/(0.5^.1)-1 = 17.9%.
As a more concrete example, with the S&P 500 price/dividend ratio presently about 43, versus a historical norm of 26, the NPF on dividends is about 43/26 = 1.65. That figure translates into a 10-year prospective return estimate of 1.10/(1.65^.1)-1 = 4.6%.
The chart below compares 10-year total return estimates using this rule-of-thumb with the actual subsequent 10-year total returns (nominal) achieved by the S&P 500. While explicitly modeling cash flows generally produces tighter results in our experience, these “model free” estimates have aligned well with subsequent outcomes. It should be evident that smooth fundamentals such as dividends, revenues, book values, and long-averaged earnings can provide a reasonable basis for long-term return expectations. As always, past relationships between fundamentals and subsequent market returns don't ensure the future reliability of these relationships.
It’s interesting to note both the broad correlation between the estimates and the subsequent returns, as well as the periods where they don’t match. In general, points where the actual 10-year return on the S&P 500 (SPX10YR_TR) shoots well beyond the projected return are points where the terminal valuation at the end of the 10-year period was well out of line with historical norms. Examine 1964 for example – the actual subsequent 10-year return significantly undershot the expected 10-year return.
That outcome reflects the fact that the terminal valuation at the end of the 10-year period (1974) was deeply below the norm, so stocks lost more during that period than one would have expected. Similarly, examine 1990. In that case, the actual return substantially overshot the expected return. That outcome reflects the fact that the terminal valuation at the end of the 10-year period (2000) was dramatically above the norm. At present, the return of the S&P 500 over the past decade – though below average – has actually overshot what would have been expected in 2002. This reflects the fact that valuations today are still well above their norms. Unless we assume that valuations will remain rich forever, this doesn’t portend well for returns going forward.
Emphatically, the rule-of-thumb cannot be accurately used with fundamentals like “forward operating earnings” that are sensitive to expansions and recessions. When the denominator of your valuation multiple is affected by cyclical economic fluctuations, the multiple often says more about where you are in the business cycle than where you are in terms of valuation. Likewise, the proper historical “norm” for a valuation multiple is the level that is itself associated with “normal” subsequent returns. We sometimes see analysts using valuation “norms” where nearly half of the data represents bubble valuations since the mid-1990’s. We are now nearly 14-years into a period where the S&P 500 has underperformed Treasury bills. It is lunacy to consider the valuations that produced this outcome as the “norm.”
To illustrate this point, notice that while Shiller P/Es below 12 have historically been associated with subsequent returns averaging about 15% annually over the following decade, Shiller P/Es about 22 or higher have been followed by nominal returns averaging only about 3.6% annually over the next decade, on average (the present multiple is 21.2). With little respite, the Shiller P/E has been above 22 since 1995, and the average Shiller P/E since that time has been over 27. To load that stretch into the calculation of the “normal level” destroys the whole concept of a norm: the valuation norm should be the level that is reasonably associated with “normal” subsequent market returns.
We remain convinced that stocks are richly valued here. A fairly run-of-the-mill normalization of valuations in the course of the present market cycle would imply bear market losses of about one-third of the market’s value, without even establishing significant undervaluation. Then again, there’s no assurance that valuations will normalize, or that stocks will experience a bear market here. Maybe Wall Street is correct that profit margins will remain forever elevated and The New Global Economy™ will never again witness “normal” valuations on these measures at all. There’s no shortage of analysts who effectively embrace that view by focusing only on forward-operating earnings.
Still, it’s worth a moment’s consideration that “secular” lows (which we typically observe every 30-35 years, most recently in 1982, and that serve as launching pads for long-term market advances) have usually been associated with declines in normalized price-fundamental ratios to about half of their historical norms. Such an event even 15 years from today would be associated with an estimated annual total return of just 2.7% for the S&P 500 between now and then. Such an event a decade from now would be associated with a negative expected total return for the S&P 500 in the interim. And while it’s not our expectation, such an event in the present market cycle would make “S&P 500” not just an index, but a price target.
[Geek’s Note: The more general version of this rule of thumb is: Estimated prospective 10-year S&P 500 total return = 1.10/([NPF_current/NPF_future]^(1/T)) – 1. So moving from an NPF of 1.4 to an NPF of 0.5 over a period of 15 years would produce an estimated prospective return of 1.10/([1.4/.5]^(1/15))-1 = 2.7%].
http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc121126.htm
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