Wednesday 15 January 2020

US stocks pull back amid “elevated valuations”

Markets were mixed on Tuesday.

The S&P 500 fell 0.2 percent but the STOXX Europe 600 rose 0.3 percent and the Nikkei 225 rose 0.7 percent.

US stocks fell back after early gains following strong earnings reports from JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.

Some analysts are warning of an overvalued US stock market, with the five biggest stocks dwarfing the rest of the market.

According to Goldman Sachs, the equity market cap-to-GDP ratio is above 200 percent and at an all-time high.

“Such elevated valuations in past periods have weighed on equity returns over the subsequent five years and lowered the odds of positive outcomes,” Goldman Sachs Investment Strategy Group CIO Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani said in the group’s 2020 outlook.

Nevertheless, Goldman Sachs’ chief global equity strategist Peter Oppenheimer said the valuation expansion that drove the strong gains in 2019 should, based on history, lead to more gains this year.

In contrast, Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management, said that 2020 could be when “the notion of mean reversion of returns finally surfaces”.

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