Here’s the thing. Earnings have collapsed. Utterly and completely. Like a house of cards. Like never before.
And because equity prices only fell by ~50%, that means the price earnings ratio skyrocketed to the stratosphere and beyond. Just look at the chart of the S&P 500 index’s P/E ratio - it looks like it just fell through a wormhole:
Source: Chart of the Day
Honestly, my initial reaction was to ignore this latest chart. First, because we already went over this months ago when the P/E ratio was 122: How The Price Earnings Ratio Can Fool You. But also because this whole issue is truly meaningless.
But then I realized that this chart is making the rounds on the internet at a torrid pace. It is being forwarded and many other bloggers are featuring it with a bearish slant. So while it really is a distraction, perhaps there’s something of value here. Not the data set graphed but rather the reaction of people and their fixation on this useless little statistic.
If anything, the morbid fascination with the gloomy and shocking picture the above chart depicts tells us about the public mood out there. And from a contrarian point of view, this is the sort of ‘worry’ that bull markets proverbially like to climb.
