Yes! It is a Stock and Bond Bubble!
7-1-15
Secular Market Top – Since January 2000
+53.3% Dow
+171.8% Transports
+94.2% Utilities
+40.4% S&P 500
+22.5% Nasdaq
+52.2% 30yr Treasury Bond
+304.6% Gold
+132.3% Oil
From High to Low
+304.6% Gold
+171.8% Transports
+132.3% Oil
+94.2% Utilities
+53.3% Dow Jones
+52.2% 30 Year Treasury
+40.4% S&P 500
+22.5% Nasdaq
It is easily seen that in the year 2000 the Nasdaq was horribly overvalued and gold was on the give away table, such lopsided returns 15 years later!
Here we today back in bubble land! Shiller PE10 at 27.30 and a minuscule S&P 500 dividend yield of 1.92%. This stock market is horribly over valued. According to moneychimp.com the 10 year estimated return is 1.64%. Not much return considering your risk.
Long term bonds offer very little respite as yields have been pounded down by world wide central banks and 1st world Boomers saving for retirement(savings glut). Currently today the U.S. 30 year Treasury bond is yielding 3.08%, this presents a possible speculation as the economy is long in the tooth creating the real possibility of an upcoming recession to pound down the yield further pushing the bond up in price. However, for the long term value investor, rates are now so below average capital appreciation have simply become rank speculation.
As rates move up our averaging formula will increase your position. This has begun with a very small 2% position. I use the 10 year Treasury as my benchmark in determining over all bond allocation. In order to go to DYI’s 60% maximum in bonds would require a yield of 9%! At today’s yield of 2.34% that is a long way off.
Time has a funny way of changing the economic landscape, just as the inflationary 1970’s (MMF, short term bonds) gave way to the dis-inflationary (long bonds) 80’s and 90’s, now we have the ultra low inflation/deflation(long bonds) of the 2000’s – 2010’s. As the savings glut ends with more and more Boomers moving out of the workforce and a return to a growing economy rates will begin to rise again. Exactly when I have no idea and nor does anyone else. It has been one hell of bond rally of lifetime as pictured below.
DYI’s secular sentiment indicator shows clearly where stocks and bonds are overvalued.
Market Sentiment
Smart Money buys aggressively!
Capitulation
Despondency
Max-Pessimism *Market Bottoms*Short Term Bonds
Depression MMF
Hope
Relief *Market returns to Mean* Gold
Smart Money buys the Dips!
Optimism
Media Attention
Enthusiasm
Smart Money – Sells the Rallies!
Thrill
Greed
Delusional
Max-Optimism *Market Tops* Long Term Bonds
Denial of Problem U.S. Stocks
Anxiety
Fear
Desperation
Smart Money Buys Aggressively!
Capitulation
Slow Growth is not forever and rates will rise again. We have invested accordingly.
AGGRESSIVE PORTFOLIO – ACTIVE ALLOCATION
Active Allocation Bands (excluding cash) 0% to 60%
83% – Cash –Short Term Bond Index – VBIRX
15% -Gold- Precious Metals & Mining – VGPMX
2% -Lt. Bonds- Long Term Bond Index – VBLTX
0% -Stocks- Total Stock Market Index – VTSAX
[See Disclaimer]
**************
Maximum Aggressive Portfolio
(Super Max)
74% Cash – Hussman Strategic Total Return Fund – HSTRX
15% Gold – Tocqueville Gold Fund – TGDLX
2% Lt. Bonds – Zero Coupon 2025 Fund – BTTRX
9% Stocks – Federated Prudent Bear Fund – BEARX
[See Disclaimer]
My favorite economist and money manager A. Gary Shilling stating that slow growth is NOT forever.I don’t agree with the slow-growth-innitelyforecasts.
I’ve long said that, until global deleveraging is completed, gross domestic product will continue to grow by about 2 percent annually. I’ve also noted that reducing debt levels after a financial crisis, especially one caused by a borrowing binge, normally takes about a decade. This episode is eight years old, and at the rate things are going, it may take longer than 10 years. U.S. household debt relative to after-tax income has fallen to 102 percent from 130 percent, but it’s still a long way from the 65 percent norm.
Nevertheless, the process will end at some point, and I continue to believe it will be followed by rapid real economic growth of at least 3.5 percent a year. That growth will no doubt be fueled by today’s new technologies, including computers, the Internet, biotech, telecom, semiconductors, robotics and 3-D printers.
Note that the Industrial Revolution and railroads started in the late 1700’s and grew explosively, but from zero starting points. It was only after the Civil War that they became big enough to drive the U.S. economy.
Secular Stagnation
Productivity is a complex phenomenon. It comes in waves that are often unrelated to the current economic situation, so recent weakness shouldn’t be extrapolated. Even in the Depression-era 1930’s, output per hour rose at a healthy 2.4 percent annual rate, higher than the 2.1 percent growth of the Roaring ’20s. Many of the tech advances of the 1920’s — electrification of factories and homes, increased use of telephones, the dawn of the radio era — weren’t exploited until the following decade, when they became must-have conveniences.
In the current setting, companies may have compensated for anemic revenue growth by cutting costs so much that productivity growth, which normally would have been spread out, was concentrated in 2009-2010. Recent productivity weakness probably indicates that companies have reached the bottom of the cost-cutting barrel. The leap in profit margins since the recession has also topped out in the last two years; corporate profits have now begun to decline. So businesses will no doubt turn from reducing costs to promoting productivity. Companies will probably redouble these efforts if wage increases push up unit labor costs.
At the same time, companies will probably increase research-and-development spending and reinstitute labor-training programs as the supply of unemployed skilled workers shrinks. The need for trained workers will be enhanced by the growing use of robots, which generates jobs in design, engineering, maintenance, marketing and logistics.
Solutions to the current crisis in higher education may end up promoting productivity, as well. Students and their tuition-paying parents now know that a college degree no longer guarantees a job that pays well. In this regard, two education developments are encouraging. First, many colleges are emphasizing degrees in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, where jobs are waiting. Second, German manufacturers have transplanted their apprenticeship program to plants in the southeastern U.S., where they coordinate worker training with nearby community colleges. American businesses are beginning to copy this model.
As for the Reinhart-Rogoff argument — that high government debt depresses GDP — it’s probably the other way around. Slow economic growth depresses tax revenue and raises government social spending, thereby causing bigger deficits and debt levels.
The argument that growth is stymied because companies have cut capital spending may also be missing a larger trend. Much of the spending to build new tech and social-media companies, such as Google and Facebook, isn’t counted as capital outlays. The brains of the entrepreneurs and developers substitute for capital spending. A high-tech startup in a garage or a college dorm doesn’t register in government data the way a new auto plant does. Many successful startups didn’t need much more than a laptop, and most of the money they raised went to advertising and marketing, not building factories.
Fed economists believe that the pricing of high-tech equipment may result in understated business investment. Not surprisingly, capital equipment prices have fallen 21 percent since the early 1980’s. Furthermore, the correlation between capital spending and productivity is, contrary to the belief of the slow-growth advocates, weak to nonexistent. This is shown by the correlations between private, fixed capital investment and productivity with a series of leads and lags.
From the first quarter of 1948 to the fourth quarter of 1990, the strongest relationship was between capital spending and productivity growth three quarters later, which makes sense. But the statistical fit, according to my firm’s research, was very poor. Even that weak relationship broke down between the fourth quarter of 1990 and the first quarter of this year. The best fit was between productivity growth now and capital spending 16 quarters later, which defies any causal explanation.
So there doesn’t appear to be any meaningful statistical relationship between capital spending and enhanced productivity. Spending money on more machines doesn’t do the job, suggesting that productivity flows mainly from new technology such as robotics, better management, more motivated employees, better logistics and, probably, dumb luck.
The pessimistic argument that American corporations have been buying back stocks instead of investing in plant and equipment carries some weight, but dividend increases still leave the payout ratio (the percentage of net income paid to shareholders) for the S&P 500 at 42 percent, well below the long-term 52 percent average. It can be argued that low interest rates make low dividend yields (dividend per share divided by price per share) acceptable. In any event, the dividend yield for the S&P 500 index is now just 1.97 percent, well below the earlier 3 percent norm.
True, government regulation is excessive, as the slow-growth advocates maintain. Since 1970, more than half of Americans have relied on government for meaningful income; in 2007, it was 58 percent, according to my firm’s research. Yet voters haven’t used the ballot box to accelerate their government goodies.
Apparently, Americans still believe they can get further on their own merit than by pushing government to redistribute income in their favor. And if I’m right about a coming economic boom, they will have even less reason to rely on government largess.
DYI
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Yes! It is a Stock and Bond Bubble!
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