US Equities: Resilient Force or Case Study in Denial?

Did you think I would have an entire post on stock markets, without taking a dive into implied equity risk premiums? Unlike PE ratios that focus just on stock prices or treasury bond rates that focus just on the alternative to stocks, the implied equity risk premium is a composite number that is a function of how stocks are priced, given cash flows and expected growth in earnings, as well as treasury bond rates. In my monthly updates for the S&P 500, I compute and report this number and as of October 1, 2019, here is what it looked like:

Download spreadsheet

The equity risk premium for the S&P 500 on October 1, 2019, was 5.55%, and by itself, you may not know what to do with this number, but the graph below shows how this number has changed between 2009 and 2019:

There are two uses for this number. First, it becomes the price of equity risk in my company valuations, allowing me to maintain market neutrality when valuing WeWork, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) or Kraft Heinz Co (NASDAQ: KHC). In fact, the valuations that I will do in October 2019 will use an equity risk premium of 5.55% (the implied premium on October 1, 2019, for the S&P 500) as my mature market premium. Second, though I have confessed to being a terrible market timer, the implied ERP has become my divining rod for overall market pricing. An unduly low number, like the 2% that I computed at the end of 1999 for the S&P 500, would represent market over-pricing and a really high number, such as the 6.5% that you saw at the start of 2009, would be a sign of market under-pricing. At 5.55%, I am at the high end of the range, not the low end, and that backs up the case that given treasury rates, earnings and cash flows today, stock prices are not unduly high.

I am neither bullish nor bearish, just market-neutral. In other words, my investment philosophy is built on valuing individual companies, not taking a view on the market, and I will take the market as a given in my valuation. Does this mean that I am sanguine about the future prospects of equities? Not in the least! With equities, it is worth remembering that the coast is never clear, and that the reason we get the equity risk premiums that I estimated in the last section is because the future can deliver unpleasant surprises. I can see at least two ways in which a large market correction an unfold.

An Implosion in Fundamentals
Note that my comfort with equities stems from the equity risk premium being 5.55%, but that number is built on solid cash flows, a very low but still positive growth in earnings and low interest rates. While the number is robust enough to withstand a shock to one of these inputs, a combination that puts all three inputs at risk would cause the implied ERP to collapse and stock pricing red flags to show up. In this scenario, you would need all of the following to fall into place:

I can make an argument for one, perhaps even two of these developments, occurring together, but a scenario where all three things happen is implausible. In short, if economic growth collapses, I see it as unlikely that interest rates will rise.