We Are In The Middle Of A Hope-Destroying, Sideways-Moving Market

Vitaliy Katsenelson is Chief Investment Officer at Investment Management Associates in Denver, Colo. He is the author of Active Value Investing (Wiley, 2007) and The Little Book of Sideways Markets (Wiley, December 2010). He writes a monthly column for Institutional Investor

In early May I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the Value Investing Congress in Las Vegas. The last time I had spoken there, it was May 2008 and the market was just coming off its top.? The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was trading at 18 times trailing earnings. Profit margins were at a modern-day high. They subsequently collapsed but came back to set an even higher high. If you normalize profits for high margins and look at ten-year trailing earnings, in 2008 stocks were trading 66 percent above their average. They were at 30 times ten-year trailing earnings.

In all honesty, I could do the same presentation today that I did five years ago, since market valuation is not dramatically different from what it was then. A cyclical bear and a cyclical bull market later, the S&P 500 is at (the same) 18 times trailing earnings and 26 times ten-year trailing earnings. Investors who were on the sidelines the past few years and who are now pouring money into stocks, expecting that we are in the midst of a secular bull market, will likely be disappointed. The previous sideways market, of 1966–82, included four cyclical bull markets and five cyclical bear markets. From 1970 to 1973 the Dow went from 700 to 1,000, just to drop again, to 600.

Sideways markets are there to destroy hope. It is when nobody wants to own stocks ever again, when valuations are below their historical average, that a secular sideways market finally dies (actually, more like goes into hibernation), and the next secular bull market is born. But even that is not enough: Stocks need to spend time at below-average valuations. In the 1966–82 market they spent half of their time at below-average valuations. During the recent crisis we tiptoed into below-average valuations, but we danced right back out.

To believe we are in the midst of a secular bull market, you have to be very comfortable with three things, starting with profit margins. Today corporate profit margins are hitting all-time highs. Historically, profit margins have been mean-reverting — high margins were never sustained by corporations over a prolonged period of time because, as legendary value investor Jeremy Grantham puts it, “capitalism works.” ?When a company — Apple, for example — starts earning very high margins, its competitors (like Samsung) come in with lower prices. In response, Apple must lower its margins. If margins decline even as the economy grows, earnings growth will be very benign or negative.

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