If bond volatility persists, we can expect the difficulties for last year’s leaders to continue too.
What of the broader question of whether lower bond yields justify higher valuations on stocks? It is time for an entry from Robert Shiller of Yale University, who late last year introduced the concept of the “Excess CAPE Yield” (his measure of the long-term earnings yield on stocks minus the 10-year bond yield). The higher this gauge, the more we can expect stocks to beat bonds in future. Thanks to low bond yields, the ECY is positive at present, suggesting that stocks should indeed beat bonds.
At the peak of the boom in 2000, the ECY was negative, meaning that earnings yields had dropped below bond yields, so the indicator correctly signaled that stocks were due for a period of terrible relative performance. The ECY is telling us that the current stock market isn’t as wildly overvalued as in 2000. But that is faint praise. Is it telling us that this is a great time to buy stocks?
Many interpreted it that way. But Shiller wrote a column for the New York Times over the weekend that corrects that impression.
Right now the E.C.Y. is 3.15 percent. That is roughly its average for the last 20 years. It is relatively high, and it predicts that stocks will outperform bonds. Current interest rates for bonds make that a very low hurdle.
Consider that when you factor in inflation, the 10-year Treasury note, yielding around 1.4 percent, will most likely pay back less in real dollars at maturity than your original investment. Stocks may not have the usual high long-run expectations (the CAPE tells us that), but at least there is a positive long-run expected return.
Putting all of this together, I’d say the stock market is high but still in some ways more attractive than the bond market.
Shiller isn’t telling us to fill our boots with stocks, so much as to be very careful about bonds. It’s quite possible for both to fall together. If you find this disappointing, he understands:
The markets may well be dangerously high right now, and I wish my measurements provided clearer guidance, but they don’t. We can’t accurately forecast the moment-by-moment movements of birds, and the stock and bond markets are, unfortunately, much the same.
The bottom line is to continue to be careful out there. We will have to endure plenty more rotation before this is over.
Survival Tips
It has been hard to write this after a day spent largely giving my opinion on the Harry and Meghan interview. Sometimes being a British expat can be a problem. Anyway, on a royal theme, here is a remarkable clip of Prince playing George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps, in a band that includes Tom Petty and George's own son—who seems thoroughly to enjoy Prince's guitar solo, which comes towards the end of the clip. On a slightly more tenuous royal theme you could sit down and listen to Their Satanic Majesties Request by the Rolling Stones, or Killer Queen by Queen.
If Harry and Meghan's travails have whetted the appetite for even more Windsors drama then my favorite actress in the part of Elizabeth II to date is Helen Mirren in The Queen. She also did a turn as Elizabeth I a year earlier—a rather more dynamic queen who had real and not figurative blood on her hands. Compare and contrast her with another dame, Judi Dench, in the same role in Shakespeare In Love.
John Authers is a senior editor for markets. Before Bloomberg, he spent 29 years with the Financial Times, where he was head of the Lex Column and chief markets commentator. He is the author of The Fearful Rise of Markets and other books.