(from http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/ on 10/31/17)
The Shiller P/E ratio is shown above.
What is it?
Shiller (who won an actual Nobel® Prize, not a fake one like I made in my 3D printer) analyzes the value of stock markets. One key metric he came up with was his Shiller P/E ratio – it reviews the price of the stock divided by its earnings, but rather than for a single stock Shiller looked at the largest 500 stocks on the US markets – the Standard and Poors (S&P) 500. It’s sort of a proxy for how big business is doing in America (and, to a lesser extent, internationally, since these stocks are very big and typically have significant foreign revenue). Read the above paragraph forty times if you’re having trouble sleeping.
Now you know what it is. Normally I’d be all snarky here and mention how it’s exactly the sort of straight line that Johnny Depp could walk on a Saturday night, but I’ll just leave this short post here.
You don’t need a Nobel™ to read this graph . . .
