How do you feel about CGOS being in the very high range of that very long term chart from a valuation perspective?
a) New Normal where the % is consistently higher
b) Corp profits will decline to normalise
c) GDP will increase to normalise.
A trip to the bottom of the range using my eyeball and tabletop calculator looks like about a 25% reduction in CGOS/GDP?
It’s probably doesn’t appear so because of the horizontal axis lines but linear trend line for that series is up sloping and the last data point is just about bang on trend.
The up slope in the trend may not be real, but rather emanating from the shortness of the time series. Although it makes sense as a country gets richer it gathers more capital and that is generally employed through a corporate structure, so the up slope trend makes logical sense.
The late 200’s excursion into stretched upside did not occur in isolation - It coincided with a similar deviation in earnings series and terms of trade.
– there’s a small degree of uncertainty where the trend line truly sits but I see next to no probability that there has been a paradigm shift. It’s a reversion to the mean series for me.
That’s clearly what has happened to date.
Real GDP is the most stable of any series I follow. If anything I suspect that its uptrend will slow slightly. The drivers of Real GDP are population growth and productivity. Population growth of last few hundred years is unsustainable, no evidence that productivity can fill the gap of declining population.
Nominal GDP, being Real GDP plus Inflation is more volatile because inflation is more volatile.is that inflation will stay low/tammed for quite a while unless we have a huge supply shock.
So GDP will increase but not at a rapid rate and infarct probably a little slower than recent history.
For GDP to get us to the bottom of the range whilst earnings hold stable would be a long drawn out process.
Earnings are the most volatile series but probably only a fraction as volatile as the markets price reaction to them.
From a valuation prospective I sit and watch and react when I think I can buy something at a price that offers an appropriate risk/return based on cash flows.
These big picture series are secondary for me to the economics of the actual businesses I invest in – for example a lot of macro series have largely been affected by the mining boom. The GFC offered wonderful prices in some non- mining companies even though the macro picture at the time looked dubious.
Population growth of last few hundred years is unsustainable,
Just curious as to why it is unsustainable apart from the law of large numbers (and who knows where this will in fact kick in)?
The same has been said for the last 100 years but yields keep increasing and new methods are found for growing crops in formerly barren lands.
Do you keep track of what has in fact happened where population has stopped growing eg Netherlands/Switzerland (I think from memory?)
V interesting tho thanks
Just curious as to why it is unsustainable apart from the law of large numbers (and who knows where this will in fact kick in)?
The same has been said for the last 100 years but yields keep increasing and new methods are found for growing crops in formerly barren lands.
Do you keep track of what has in fact happened where population has stopped growing eg Netherlands/Switzerland (I think from memory?)
V interesting tho thanks
A finite earth can’t sustain an exponential population growth rate. What can’t go on forever won’t.
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Edit: Flying Fox beat me too it - with a bit more meat too.
But that graph is fractal: no matter what time frame you put on it, it will look the same.
I think it is far better to look at it like that graph of the life of a turkey:
View attachment 51477
Flyfox thankyou for your answer, but I don't quite understand what you mean by nothing in nature fits an exponential. I would say what is in effect the opposite, nothing in nature fits a linear model. But perhaps I have read too much Taleb.
Very much an amateur in this area and happy to be shown up.
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You're right nothing fits a linear func but in any ecosystem with constrains you will never have exponential growth.
Typically this is due to some sort of predator prey relationship and or disease outbreaks or just constrains on resources (Any major break through in energy production aside (and probably despite of), it is a fact that we have finite resources, not a conjecture). Since we have more or less conquered the first two, the later will put a lid on things.
We are way off topic here - but I find this analysis as as an ecosystem very compelling in systems far removed from nature eg the world wide web.
Read a fascinating book recently called "From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg" which I highly recommend. It tells you a lot about the web and the internet (which are different btw) that you thought you knew but you really didn't and how this system is best analysed by reference to a natural system.
Fits in nicely with chaos theory ideas of feedback, small changes in inputs etc. (If anyone is interested in chaos theory I recommend John Gribbin's Deep Simplicity)
I will stop blabbering but I enjoy playing with and trying to overlay these cross-disciplinary frameworks especially when it comes to the most diverse and fascinating system of all - the market!
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