One of the most irrelevant and insipid arguments liberals love to tender when you critique a democrat president is,
"OH YEAH!!! WELL THE STOCK MARKET IS DOING WELL!!!"
Forget that unemployment is still recession territory
Forget that underemployment is at an all time high
And forget that economic growth is stagnant
No, find that one statistic that has NOTHING to do with presidential or economic performance. AND cite something you normally hate and loathe - Wall Street - as a metric.
Regardless, I didn't follow the market for jack during 2013. This is in part because I have no money to invest and also in part because it is overvalued due to all the retirement dollars that have been flooding it since the advent of the 401k. But while sitting at my favorite bar, I caught a glimpse of a chart of the DJIA on the TV. And it looked like it was almost at 17,000.
"This couldn't be. What has happened in the economy that would warrant that?!"
So I admitted I was ignorant about the stock market for the past year and decided to go right to the source and ask the horse, for Dr. Robert Shiller will give you the answer you'll endorse - the S&P 500 P/E ratio.
In other words, "nothing to see here people." It's the same damn thing that it's always been. Earnings haven't been going up, but prices have, resulting in an even more-inflated bubble. Historically, the S&P has traded at a PE of 15, and now, WITH NO LEGITIMATE ECONOMIC REASON OR RATIONALE the market is trading at a 67% premium over its historical average.
Again, for the cheap seats, this means if you buy stocks today it is like paying:
$5.44 for a gallon of gas
$680 for an XBox One, or
$12 for a Chipolte burrito
And don't even get me started on the dividend yield.
In short, nothing has changed, except for the severity of the bubble. Bar the Great Recession, the Dotcom Bubble and the Housing Bubble, the stock market has never been so overvalued.
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