Frustrating Investors

"The individual investor is very frustrated and at their wits' end with the equity market, and it's hard to blame them," Walter Todd, who helps manage $940 million at Greenwood Capital in Greenwood, South Carolina, said in a Sept. 16 telephone interview. "It's certainly not going to help push the market higher if you've got that constant drain."

While BNY Mellon Wealth Management's Leo Grohowski says he understands the aversion to equity price swings, valuations are too low to justify more selling. Of the 500 companies in the benchmark equity index, 331 had price-earnings ratios at the end of August lower than they were when the year began, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

'Lack of Confidence'

"There is this lack of confidence in equities as an asset class just due to the volatility," Grohowski, the chief investment officer for BNY Mellon, which oversees $171 billion, said in a telephone interview on Sept. 15. "But for investors who are long term and intermediate term, the market is undervalued. Now would not be a wise time to be reducing equity exposure because there's an awful lot of bad news or expectations already priced in to the market."

Outflows following September 2008 lasted through March 2009. During the last three months of 2008, companies were reporting their fourth quarter of shrinking earnings and the U.S. jobless rate was halfway through its climb to the highest level since 1983. Gross domestic product slid 5.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2009, the most of any recession since the 1930s, according to Commerce Department data.

Now, investors are withdrawing funds after companies beat profit estimates for 10 straight quarters. The world's largest economy posted two years of growth and economists are calling for GDP to expand 1.6 percent in 2011 and 2.2 percent in 2012, according to the median estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Hoarding Cash

Corporations have been hoarding cash and paying down borrowings. The S&P 500's net debt to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization ratio is down to 2.5 from 5 in the second quarter of 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg show. This year's earnings will increase 18 percent to a record $99.57 a share and break $100 next year, according to the data.

DirecTV in El Segundo, California, is trading at 14.4 times reported earnings, a valuation 14 percent below the level at the end of 2008. Since the third quarter of 2009, profits at the largest U.S. satellite-television provider increased an average 64 percent each quarter. They're forecast to rise 26 percent next year, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Earnings at Dow Chemical Co. retreated during the financial crisis. While profits more than doubled in every quarter of 2010, the shares are down 17 percent this year. The largest U.S. chemical maker fired workers, shut plants and sold assets to bolster earnings. Since 2009, the Midland, Michigan-based company has posted better-than-estimated sales in all but one period.