Equity Premium

Does the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) make predictions useful to investors? In his October 2014 paper entitled “CAPM: an Absurd Model”, Pablo Fernandez argues that the assumptions and predictions of CAPM have no basis in the real world. A key implication of CAPM for investors is that an asset’s expected return relates positively to its expected beta (regression coefficient relative to the expected market risk premium). Based on a survey of related research, he concludes that: Keep Reading

Can the U.S. stock market continue to deliver its historical return? In the preliminary draft of his paper entitled “A Pragmatist’s Guide to Long-run Equity Returns, Market Valuation, and the CAPE”, John Golob poses two questions:

1. What long-run real return should investors expect from U.S. equities?
2. Do popular metrics reliably indicate when the U.S. equity market is overvalued?

He notes that the body of relevant research presents no consensus on the answers to these questions, which both relate to long-term growth in corporate earnings per share. Recent forecasts for real stock market returns range from as low as 2% to about 6% (close to the 6.5% average since 1871), reflecting disagreements about how slow GDP growth, low dividends, share buybacks and the profitability of retained earnings affect earnings per share growth. The author introduces Federal Reserve Flow of Funds (U.S. Financial Accounts) and S&P 500 aggregate book value to gauge effects of stock buybacks. He also assesses the logic of using Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio (CAPE or P/E10) as a stock market valuation metric. Using S&P 500 Index price and dividend data, related earnings data and U.S. financial and economic data as available during 1871 through 2013, he concludes that: Keep Reading

Is the capitalization-weighted market portfolio a lame benchmark? In his August 2014 paper entitled “It’s Easy to Beat the Market”, Moshe Levy tests the perception that it is hard to beat a capitalization-weighted portfolio and therefore that an index so weighted is a challenging benchmark. Specifically, he compares the gross risk-adjusted performance of a capitalization-weighted buy-and-hold portfolio to those of 1,000 random-weighted (normalized to 100%) buy-and-hold portfolios of the same stocks.To ensure liquidity, he restricts the portfolios to the 500 U.S. stocks with the largest market capitalizations at the beginning of 1998. If a stock is delisted during the sample period due to merger/acquisition or bankruptcy, he sets its weight to zero at that point and renormalizes residual portfolios to 100% [per an email exchange with the author]. He focuses on Sharpe ratio and terminal value of an initial investment as key performance metrics. He ignores trading frictions, arguing that no trading is involved other than initial purchases at portfolio formation and reinvestment of dividends. Using daily total (dividend-reinvested) returns for the specified stocks and the contemporaneous 30-day U.S. Treasury bill yield as the risk-free rate during January 1998 through December 2012, he finds that: Keep Reading

What is the best estimate of the Equity Risk Premium (ERP), the return in excess of the risk-free rate required as compensation for the risk of holding equity? In his August 2014 paper entitled “A History of the Equity Risk Premium and its Estimation”, Basil Copeland summarizes recent ERP estimates and explains how the historical equity return can overstate ERP in terms of unanticipated (anomalous) capital gains. He further describes the behavior of historical and expected ERP during 1872 through 2013 and estimates ERP for 2014 through 2023. He discusses ERP estimation issues such as geometric mean versus arithmetic mean and top-down versus bottom-up forecasts. Using data from Shiller for 1871-1959 and from Damodaran for 1960-2013, he finds that: Keep Reading

Is the U.S. stock market in a Federal Reserve-driven bubble that is about to burst? In his August 2014 paper entitled “Fed by the Fed: A New Bubble Grows on Wall St.”, Oliver Dettmann examines how shifts away from quantitative easing by central banks, and the introduction of rising interest rates, may affect current valuation levels of the U.S. stock market. He focuses on a discounted real earnings model, employing a range of optimistic, moderate and pessimistic scenarios. Based on estimates of S&P 500 real earnings growth and an implied earnings discount rate derived from a sample period of January 1974 through June 2014, he finds that: Keep Reading

Is there some better predictor of long-term stock market return than the widely cited cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio (P/E10 or CAPE)? In the July 2014 version of his paper entitled “Forecasting Equity Returns: An Analysis of Macro vs. Micro Earnings and an Introduction of a Composite Valuation Model”, Stephen Jones compares how well several fundamental and economic factors predict real long-term (10-year) equity market total return, with focus on Market Value/Gross Domestic Product (MV/GDP). He compares the predictive power of MV/GDP to those of P/E10 and Tobin’s q. He then constructs a multi-variable forecasting model that includes MV/GDP, a demographic metric and personal income-related variables. Using U.S. data since 1954 for different input variables, he finds that: Keep Reading

What are the main investment behaviors of emerging markets and component stocks? In their January 2014 paper entitled “Studies of Equity Returns in Emerging Markets: A Literature Review”, Yigit Atilgan, Ozgur Demirtas and Koray Simsek survey the stream of research on emerging markets equity return predictability and volatility. This survey covers articles in the top four finance journals (Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and Review of Financial Studies) and the three finance journals that focus on emerging markets (Emerging Markets Finance & Trade, Emerging Markets Review and Journal of International Money and Finance). Based on detailed reviews of 54 articles published in these journals over the past three decades, they conclude that: Keep Reading

Are investors exhausting the potential of stocks? In his May 2014 presentation packages entitled “Has The Stock Market Been ‘Overgrazed’?” and “Momentum Has Not Been ‘Overgrazed'”, Claude Erb investigates the proposition that sanguine research and ever easier access to investments are exhausting U.S. stock market investment opportunities. In the first package, he focuses on trends in the overall equity risk premium, the size effect and the value premium. In the second, he focuses on momentum investing. Using U.S. stock market and equity factor premium returns and contemporaneous U.S. Treasury bill yields during 1926 through 2013, he concludes that: Keep Reading

Does the reward for taking the risk of holding stocks exhibit any long-term trend? In his April 2014 presentation package entitled “The Incredible Shrinking ‘Realized’ Equity Risk Premium”, Claude Erb examines the trend in the realized U.S. equity risk premium (ERP) since 1925. He defines this ERP as the retrospective difference in 10-year yield between the broad U.S. stock market and the 10-year yield on safe assets such as U.S. Treasury bills or intermediate-term U.S. Treasury notes. Using 10-year returns for U.S. stocks and various alternative safe assets (bills, notes and bonds) during 1925 through 2013, he finds that: Keep Reading

Does the utilities sector exhibit a useful lead-lag relationship with the broad stock market? In their January 2014 paper entitled “An Intermarket Approach to Beta Rotation: The Strategy, Signal and Power of Utilities”, Charles Bilello and Michael Gayed test a simple strategy that holds either the U.S. utilities sector or the broad U.S. stock market based on their past relative strength. Specifically, when utilities are relatively stronger (weaker) than the market based on total return over the last four weeks, hold utilities (the market) the following week. They call this strategy the Beta Rotation Strategy (BRS) because it seeks to rotate into utilities (the market) when the investing environment favors low-beta (high-beta) stocks. They perform both an ideal (frictionless) long-term test and a short-term net performance test using exchange-traded funds (ETF). Using weekly total returns for the Fama-French utilities sector and broad market since July 1926 and for the Utilities Select Sector SPDR (XLU) and Vanguard Total Stock Market (VTI) since July 2001, all through July 2013, they find that: Keep Reading