Download PDF Aswath Damodaran writes about what he calls the corporate life cycle.[1] He illustrates the life cycle with the graphic as shown below. From a valuation perspective, Damodaran’s corporate life cycle can be broken down as follows. In the first part, Stage 1 and Stage 2, the company has no meaningful earnings and limited

The performance of the market was remarkable in the second quarter. Driven by the Magnificent 7 tech stocks, for which the total return was 16.5%, the total return for the S&P 500 was 4.3%. What was remarkable was not the gain per se, the returns were healthy but by no means unprecedented, but the valuation

A common refrain is that to get more return you have to bear more risk. But what exactly is risk? We revisit this important issue. As part of the work leading to his Noble Prize, William Sharpe noted that in equilibrium all investors should hold some combination of the risk-free asset and the market portfolio.

Download PDF   With stock prices at near record highs relative to measures like earnings or cash flow, many leading analysts have predicted meager returns over the next decade. Some have even suggested the return on the S&P 500 could be negative over the upcoming decade. Others have raised the possibility of a short-term collapse of

The S&P 500 ended the year 2023 at 4,769. During December, several leading financial firms were asked for their forecasts for the year-end 2024. The results are shown below. The most optimistic forecasts were by Fundstrat (a well-known bullish firm), Oppenheimer, and Yardeni. Considering the strong returns during 2023, four major firms, including Morgan Stanley

Professor and Nobel Prize winner Eugene Fama put forth the efficient market hypothesis and based on that concept Warren Buffet suggested that holding a passive investment in the S&P 500 was the best advice for most investors. If the market were efficient and if passive investing was best for everyone, how can that be reconciled

When attempting to explain movements in stock prices the media often overlook the key facts that for every buyer there is a seller and every outstanding share must be held continuously.  As we record this, the S&P 500 has surpassed 5,000, and it leads a lot of people to ask, ‘How could the market be

The decade ending in 2023 was a great one for common stocks. Is the next decade likely to be as good? We provide an analysis using Damodaran’s equity risk premium (ERP) and a framework developed by Jordan Brooks of AQR. Hello and welcome back to ‘Reflections on Investing’ with the Cornell Capital Group. This is

A market crash is nothing more than a low risk premium meeting risk aversion. —– John P. Hussman, Ph.D., November 8, 2021, When Bubble Meets Trouble  Risk Premiums and Stock Prices           In our third quarter memo, we stressed the importance of the equity risk premium (ERP) for understanding the level of stock prices and their relation to expected future

Real Interest Rates have an immense impact on the stock market as well as the bond market. Nonetheless, they are widely misunderstood.  Hello and welcome back to Reflections on Investing with the Cornell Capital Group. And today we’re going to talk about the real interest rate. I use the word “the real interest rate” as