Contra Shiller: Stock P/E Ratio Depends on Bond Yields, Not Historical Averages

The Wall Street Journal just offered two articles in one day touting Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price/earnings ratio (CAPE).  One of then, “Smart Moves in a Pricey Stock Market” by Jonathan Clements, concludes that, “U.S. shares arguably have been overpriced for much of the past 25 years.” Identical warnings keep appearing, year after year, despite being endlessly wrong.   The Shiller CAPE assumes the P/E ratio must revert to some heroic 1881-2014 average of 16.6 (or, in Clements’ account, a 1946-1990 average of 15).  That assumption is completely inconsistent with the so-called “Fed model” observation that the inverted P/E ratio (the E/P ratio or earnings yield) normally tracks the 10 year bond yield surprisingly closely.  From 1970 to 2014, the average E/P ratio was 6.62 and the average 10-Year bond yield was 6.77.   When I first introduced this “Fed Model” relationship to Wall Street consulting clients in “The Stock Market Like Bonds,” March 1991, I suggested bonds yields were about to fall because a falling E/P commonly preceded falling bond yields. And when the E/P turned up in 1993, bond yield obligingly jumped in 1994. Since 2010, the E/P ratio has been unusually high relative to bond yields, which means the P/E ratio has been unusually low.  The gap between the earnings yield and bond yield rose from 2.8 percentage points in 2010 to a peak of 4.4 in 2012.  Recylcing my 1991 analysis, the wide 2012 gap suggested the stock mark...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs