Omens of the fall

In the ancient world outside of Israel pagan priests discerned the will of the gods through omens in the sky and on earth.  Israelis didn’t need omens because they had revelation straight from God in the Torah. Omens came from the movement of planets and from the structure of kidneys in goats sacrificed to idols. Pagan gods would never have considered humiliating themselves by speaking directly to insignificant humans. The more omens a priest collected the more certain he could be of the will of the gods.

Investors today don’t have a revelation about the future. We have the Austrian business-cycle theory that tells us to expect a crash after years of artificially stimulating the economy with near-zero short term interest rates and massive buying of junk bonds by the Fed. But we can’t know the exact date, or even the quarter, when the crash will come. So like ancient pagans we have to rely on omens that suggest we are near the end of the expansion. These omens are what mainstream economists consider good news about the economy. Here are some gleaned from the kidneys of the Wall Street Journal.

Bubble Detectives

“One important conclusion is that the probability that the S&P 500 index is currently in a bubble is only 20-33 per cent,” according to Gavyn Davies in his recent article for the Financial Times, “How to detect amarket bubble.” “But that could change fairly quickly during 2014 if the recent pace of advance in equity prices continues.”

Davies approves of the New Palgrave definition of a financial bubble:

Bubbles are typically associated with dramatic asset price increases followed by a collapse. Bubbles arise if the price exceeds the asset’s fundamental value. This can occur if investors hold the asset because they believe that they can sell it at a higher price to some other investor even though the asset’s price exceeds its fundamental value.

Davies then mentions two other bubble detectors:

Based on the Shiller cyclically adjusted p/e (CAPE), the probability of a bubble is estimated at 33 per cent in December 2013, while the price/dividend model produces a bubble probability of 20 per cent.