stock market influences
earnings
To a substantial degree, stock prices are driven by the earnings performance of the companies whose securities are publicly traded. But profit levels and potential profit gains aren’t the only factor. Stock prices are also influenced by investor perceptions of the risk of owning stocks, by alternating emotions of fear and greed, that is, that are best expressed quantitatively in the relationship between the interest yield on government bonds and the earnings yield (1/PE) on stocks.
discounting: fear vs. greed
Stock prices typically anticipate or “discount” future earnings. But how far investors are willing to look forward is also a business cycle function of the alternating emotions of fear and greed.
Putting this relationship in its simplest form:
–at market bottoms investors are typically unwilling to discount in current prices any future good news. As confidence builds, investors are progressively willing to factor in more and more of the expected future.
–in what I would call a normal market, toward the middle of each calendar year investors begin to discount expectations for earnings in the following year.
–at speculative tops, investors are routinely driving stock prices higher by discounting earnings from two or three years hence. This, even though there’s no evidence that even professional analysts have much of a clue about how earnings will play out that far in the future.
(extreme) examples
Look back to the dark days of 2008-09. During the financial crisis, S&P 500 earnings fell by 28% from their 2007 level. The S&P 500 index, however, plunged by a tiny bit less than 50% from its July 2007 high to its March 2009 low.
In 2013, on the other hand, we can see the reverse phenomenon. S&P 500 earnings rose by 5% that year. The index itself soared by 30%, however. What happened? Stock market investors–after a four-year (!!) period of extreme caution and an almost exclusive focus on bonds–began to factor the possibility of future earnings gains into stock prices once again. This was, I think, the market finally returning to normal–something that begins to happens within twelve months of the bottom in a garden-variety recession.
Where are we now in the fear/greed cycle?
More tomorrow.