Yes thats right Bert. Also interesting are Discussions the stock market is "overvalued" - which is pretty common these days. But MarketWatch columnist Brett Arends raised eyebrows in a recent column in which he argues "valuations are higher today than they were at the peak in 1999-2000."
The dot.com era was notable for its excesses, he says, but the heady valuations of the tech bubble were driven by a handful of uber-high flying stocks, including Microsoft, Cisco, Intel and our corporate parent Yahoo.
"But that overvaluation was quite concentrated in a relatively small number of large-cap growth stocks," Arends recalls. "When you look beyond that small segment of the market, the rest of the market wasn't so bad. That is not the case right now."
Indeed, the median valuation for the top 1500 stocks by market cap today is higher than it was in 1999, Arends reports, citing the following:
Median P/E today is 20 vs. 16 in January 2000
Median price-to-book today is 2.5 vs. 2.2 in 2000
Median price-to-revenue today is 1.8 vs. 1.4 in 2000
... "Everything seems expensive. There's almost nowhere to hide. It's very difficult to find (value)" in the market today."...
