Andrew Smithers | The Daily Capitalist

Some Risk Assets Getting Frothy While the Amazing Treasury Bond Bull Market Rolls On Under Most Radar Screens

I’m not a downer all the time. I try to go where the data leads, in a risk-averse manner. If it keeps pointing in the same direction, so be it.

When I first began writing on this website in August 2010, I argued against the prevailing gloom. Recovery Summer as predicted by the advocates of Keynesian stimulus had [...]

The Japan Syndrome

Before taking a multi-week break with family in which I intend to post only for major market action, it’s time for some review. The macro theme in the U.S. economy and financial markets strikes me as just what I stated in one of my first blogs. This is what I wrote on January 9, 2009 [...]

Hurricane Season Arrives: Still Liking Steady “Con ED”, Some Bonds and Cash

Some months ago, with the stock market averages several percent higher than they are now but the economic data much better, I described the stock market as being in a topping process.

The averages have been kept where they are, in my view, primarily because standard valuation criteria have been encouraged by both projected earnings [...]

Smithers Updates His Stock Market Valuation Data, I Update it Further and Conclude: A Bubble May Be Forming

Momentum, liquidity, leverage, hope, etc. all move markets for variable lengths of time but ultimately value outs. One of the fundamentalists who I follow is the economist Andrew Smithers, who compiles and updates two measures of stock market value. He has now updated them based on Fed data through 12/13/11. At that time, his calculation [...]

Stocks in Extremistan As Recession Forecasts Continue

This is a long post about stocks and the economy. I hope you find it worth the effort to read it.

If there’s any doubt about the strength of economic expansions, on trend, in the United States, in the past half-century, the linked 52-year chart from the Philly Fed may help settle the issue: [...]

Updating Smithers: Continued Caution for Stock Bulls

I have frequently referred to a chart produced by a British analyst, Andrew Smithers (then click on “q and FAQs”,) who brilliantly (fortuitously) published a book in March 2000 proclaiming stocks to be in the greatest bubble in history- the very month that the NASDAQ peaked over 5100. Every three months, he updates graphically and [...]

Are U.S. Stocks Cheap?

The talking heads and promoters are mostly saying that either there will be no new recession any time soon and/or the stock market is pricing one in.

Time will tell on the first point. On the second one, an argument that is used repeatedly is that the average price-earnings ratio of the U. S. stock [...]

Are Stocks Finally A “Buy”?

Yes, I believe that some finally are.

This is written by someone who sold virtually all stocks at Dow 13,000 in August-September 2007 with such confidence that even when the market went up 7-8% in the fall, had no indecision and argued with friends and relatives to get out when the getting was good. Except [...]