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If you have been reading my posts, you know that I have an obsession with equity riskpremiums, which I believe lie at the center of almost every substantive debate in markets and investing. That said, I don't blame you, if are confused not only about how I estimate this premium, but what it measures.
The first is the dividends you receive, while you hold stocks, a cash flow stream that provides a measure of stability to investors who seek it. It too requires estimate for inputs, but the range of error is magnitudes smaller than with historical premiums. Actual Returns Your returns on equities come in one of two forms.
In a third post on July 1, 2022 , I pointed to inflation as a key culprit in the retreat of risk capital, i.e., capital invested in the riskiest segments of every market, and presented evidence of the impact on riskpremiums (bond default spreads and equity riskpremiums) in markets.
In a post at the start of 2021 , I argued that while stocks entered the year at elevated levels, especially on historic metrics (such as PE ratios), they were priced to deliver reasonable returns, relative to very low risk free rates (with the treasury bond rate at 0.93% at the start of 2021).
There are three possible explanations for the divergence: Short term versus Long term : The consumer survey extracts an expectation of inflation in the near term, whereas the treasury markets are providing a longer term perspective, since I am using ten-year rates to derive the market-implied inflation.
To capture the market's mood, I back out the expected return (and equity riskpremium) that investors are pricing in, through an implied equity riskpremium: Put simply, the expected return is an internal rate of return derived from the pricing of stocks, and the expected cash flows from holding them, and is akin to a yield to maturity on bonds.
In my third post at the start of 2023, I looked at US treasuries, the long-touted haven of safety for investors. In 2022, they were in the eye on the storm, with the ten-year US treasury bond depreciating in price by more than 19% during the year, the worst year for US treasury returns in a century.
Note that nothing that I have said so far is premised on modern portfolio theory, or any academic view of riskpremiums. It is true that economists have researched risk aversion for centuries and concluded that investors are collectively risk averse, and that the level of risk aversion varies across age groups, income levels and time.
Most of the variables that I report are micro variables, relating to company choices on investing, financing and dividend policies, or to data that may be needed to value these companies. I extend my equity riskpremium approach to cover other countries, using sovereign default spreads as my starting point, at this link.
The macro variables that I track on my site relate to the price of risk, a key input into valuation, in both equity and debt markets: US Equity RiskPremiums : The equity riskpremium is the price of risk in equity markets.
The Taxation of Investment Income In much of the world, income from investments (interest, dividends) is treated differently than earned income (salary, wages), by the tax code, and the reasons for the divergence are both practical and political: 1.
The hopeful note was that the Fed would lower the Fed Funds rate during the course of the year, triggering (at least in the minds of Fed watchers) lower interest rates across the yield curve, Clearly, the market not only fought through those concerns, but did so in the face of rising treasury rates, especially at the long end of the spectrum.
Thus, as you peruse my historical data on implied equity riskpremiums or PE ratios for the S&P 500 over time, you may be tempted to compute averages and use them in your investment strategies, or use my industry averages for debt ratios and pricing multiples as the target for every company in the peer group, but you should hold back.
In the first five posts, I have looked at the macro numbers that drive global markets, from interest rates to riskpremiums, but it is not my preferred habitat. The second set of inputs are prices of risk, in both the equity and debt markets, with the former measured by equity riskpremiums , and the latter by default spreads.
Thus, my estimates of equity riskpremiums, updated every month, are not designed to make big statements about markets but more to get inputs I need to value companies. In the table below, I show my estimates of the implied equity riskpremium for the S&P 500 at the start of every month, since January 2024, and on March 14, 2025.
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