Should You Buy in a Bull Market?
The market has been growing for years now, and by a lot of estimates, it's a bit overvalued today.
In this clip from Industry Focus: Tech, Motley Fool analysts Dylan Lewis and David Kretzmann discuss a listener question on whether or not it's wise for investors to wait for a correction before buying in. Find out how overvalued the market is today, how often markets correct historically, a few reasons some analysts are still counting on a bull market to continue well into the future, and more.
A full transcript follows the video.
10 stocks we like better thanWal-MartWhen investing geniuses David and TomGardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter theyhave run for over a decade, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*
David and Tomjust revealed what they believe are theten best stocksfor investors to buy right now... and Wal-Mart wasn't one of them! That's right -- theythink these 10 stocks are even better buys.
Click hereto learn about these picks!
*StockAdvisor returns as of April 3, 2017The author(s) may have a position in any stocks mentioned.
This video was recorded on April 21, 2017.
Dylan Lewis:"Thestock market seems to be highly overvalued. Fromwhat I last read, thelong-term average of the P/Eratio of theS&P 500has been about 15, and now it's over 26. Would now still be a good time to invest during this bull market,or would it be better to sit on some cash and wait for a while andhopefully see that market correction and invest then?"I love this question, and, broadly, I love gettinglistener questions. If someone out there is thinking something, chances are there are dozens or hundreds of Fools allthinking the same thing. Hunter, thanks for writing in. Ifother people have questions,industryfocus@fool.com. Let'sjump right into it, David. He'stalking about market timing. I think this is something that's on a lot of people's minds. If you consumefinancial news at some point over the last year, you'veprobably seen something along the lines of, "The market is due for a huge correction," right?
David Kretzmann:You'reprobably been hearing that since 2009,since the Great Recession. It is a common fear, especially when you've had a multiyear bull market, and you have stocks hitting fresh highs on what seems like apretty regular basis. We haven't had many10% sell-offsover the past seven years. It's a good question, andit's something to keep in mind as an investor. Onaverage, the stock market declines about 10% every 11 months, or about every year. Then, you'll have a bigger 20%, 30% or more decline every three to five-plus years. As an investor, you want to expect the market to go down. That's justpart of the price you pay as an investor to get historically above-average returns with the stock market. But, I'll take acontrarian point here, since we will be talking about some of the potentially bearish indicators. Going forward right now, the market looks historically a little pricey when you look at the P/E ratio of 26. As you mentioned, the historic ratio tends to fall a little closer to 15 or 16 or 17. The forward P/E ratioof the S&P 500 right now is 18. That means,based on what analysts are expecting,the S&P 500 is expected to earn over the next year, right now the market is priced at 18 times those forward earnings. That shows thatexpectations are pretty high that growth will continue for the companies in the index. That's one angle. On a forward basis, if thesecompanies can continue to grow,maybe they can grow into the valuation, andyou don't necessarily need a big sell-off to revert back to those historical averages. That's one angle.
Acouple other things we're actually going to talk about onMotley Fool Moneytoday as well, on our radio show, the housing market is still below its historical averages. The housing market hasslowly but surely been recovering since the Great Recession. Buthousing starts, which basically meansthe construction of new homes, is still below the long-term averages going back to 1960. As millennials now, people between the age of 18 and 34 in the U.S., they're now the largest demographic in the U.S. ahead of baby boomers. As people our age, Dylan, start to get closer to 30, they're thinking, "MaybeI don't want to rent a house anymore,I want to buy a house or even build a house," that does a lot to spur growthwithin the economy, because there's so much that goes into thepurchase and the upgrade on the renovation of a house. That'ssomething that can drive economic growth and spending over the long term. Just a couple things there. Yes, on the surface level, the market does lookpricier than normal. But there are some factors that make me think, itdoesn't necessarily mean you're going to have a huge crash right away. That'snot to say that's not going to happen. As I mentioned before, youwant to be prepared as an investor forsome sort of sell-off down the road.
Lewis:I think,to add to that, you look back over the last year and a half or so, and the market hasnavigated what I would say are two majorshocks to the system, one of them being Brexit,and the other one being the election of Donald Trump. Twobig surprises that the market reallywasn't anticipating. And yet,it has weathered it and continued to grow at this really great rate.
The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.