How not to predict the stock market

Investing expert Bert Dohmen said that “Looking at earnings, dividends and P/E ratios in order to predict future stock prices are all a waste of time” in a recent Forecasts & Strategies email issued by the economist Mark Skousen. The email continued:

Dohmen explained, “If a P/E were meaningful for predicting future price performance, why is a stock like Facebook selling at a lofty P/E of around 90, and Amazon with a P/E of 300, both still highly recommended and rising, while other stocks, like Apple, with a low P/E of around 10, [are] declining and down 35%?”

He added, “Analysts tell us that ‘earnings’ are the most important thing affecting stock prices. Really?! Well, corporate earnings in 2015-2016 have had the largest decline since the crisis in 2009, but the DJI and the S&P 500 are within about 1% of making new record highs.”

Then Dohmen asked the all-important question, “So what is the major determinant of stock market trends?”

Of course, the answer is “future earnings.” Stock prices are always based on the forward-looking views of investors. That’s why high-priced stocks such as Facebook are selling for 90 times earnings. It also explains why Amazon is selling for 300 times earnings and Tesla is selling for $230 a share even though it has no earnings! Investors are upbeat about their future. Meanwhile, Apple is selling for only 10 times earnings because it’s not viewed as a growth stock anymore.

CAPE Fear

I recently finished Meban Faber's book, Global Value: How to Spot Bubbles, Avoid Market Crashes, and Earn Big Returns in the Stock Market, and found it to agree very well with the ABCT Investing philosophy. Faber is a co-founder and Chief Investment Office of Cambria Investment Management.

Faber aimed his book at the majority of individual investors who try to time the stock market on their own. Studies of the flow of money into and out of mutual funds prove that most individual investors wait to enter the stock market until it has reached the peak of a cycle and then sell when it is near the bottom of a collapse. In spite of this, most people think they are good investors. It's all part of the syndrome in which most people think they are better looking and more intelligent than average.