IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpfi/0403004.html

A General Theory of Stock Market Valuation and Return

Author

Listed:
  • Christophe Faugere

    (U at Albany)

  • Julian Van Erlach

    (Nexxus Financial Technologies)

Abstract

We show that the long-term total market and average investor's compounded stock returns are determined by GDP growth and are much less than believed because of the infeasible assumption that dividends can be fully reinvested. The long-term stock return closely approximates the return on risk-free debt, thus yielding a zero premium on a compounded per-capita basis. We demonstrate that the market earnings yield ratio (inverse P/E) is akin to a minimum nominal expected return and a direct function of inflation and a real required yield equal to long-term real GDP per capita growth, with marginal regard to risk. Our derived valuation formula is tested against the S&P 500 index and produces a 21% mean percentage tracking error, compared to 32% for the 'Fed Model' over the period 1954 - 2002.

Suggested Citation

  • Christophe Faugere & Julian Van Erlach, 2004. "A General Theory of Stock Market Valuation and Return," Finance 0403004, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 17 May 2004.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpfi:0403004
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 32
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/fin/papers/0403/0403004.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martha Douvogiannis & Joel Lander & Athanasios Orphanides, "undated". "Earnings Forecasts and the Predictability of Stock Returns: Evidence from Trading the S&P;," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1997-06, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 10 Dec 2019.
    2. Arturo Estrella & Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, 1983. "Average Marginal Tax Rates U.S. Household Interest and Dividend Income 1954-80," NBER Working Papers 1201, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 2000. "Forecasting Profitability and Earnings," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 73(2), pages 161-175, April.
    4. Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2002. "The Equity Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(2), pages 637-659, April.
    5. Steven A. Sharpe, 1999. "Stock prices, expected returns, and inflation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-02, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Steven A. Sharpe, 2002. "Reexamining Stock Valuation and Inflation: The Implications Of Analysts' Earnings Forecasts," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 632-648, November.
    7. Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 421-436, June.
    8. Rajnish Mehra, 2003. "The Equity Premium: Why is it a Puzzle?," NBER Working Papers 9512, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Ellen R. McGrattan & Edward C. Prescott, 2000. "Is the stock market overvalued?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 24(Fall), pages 20-40.
    10. Merton H. Miller & Franco Modigliani, 1961. "Dividend Policy, Growth, and the Valuation of Shares," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34, pages 411-411.
    11. Roger G. Ibbotson & Peng Chen, 2003. "Long-Run Stock Returns: Participating in the Real Economy," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm354, Yale School of Management.
    12. Lant Pritchett, 1997. "Divergence, Big Time," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 3-17, Summer.
    13. Robert D. Arnott & Peter L. Bernstein, 2002. "What Risk Premium Is “Normal”?," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(2), pages 64-85, March.
    14. Christophe Faugère & Julian Van Erlach, 2006. "The Equity Premium: Consistent with GDP Growth and Portfolio Insurance," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 41(4), pages 547-564, November.
    15. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Christophe Faugere & Julian Van Erlach, 2004. "The Price of Gold: A Global Required Yield Theory," Finance 0403003, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christophe, Faugere, 2003. "A Required Yield Theory of Stock Market Valuation and Treasury Yield Determination," MPRA Paper 15579, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 04 Jun 2009.
    2. Christophe Faugere & Julian Van Erlach, 2003. "The Equity Premium: Explained by GDP Growth and Consistent with Portfolio Insurance," Finance 0311004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Roelof Salomons, 2008. "A Theoretical And Practical Perspective On The Equity Risk Premium," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 299-329, April.
    4. Christophe Faugère & Julian Van Erlach, 2009. "A Required Yield Theory of Stock Market Valuation and Treasury Yield Determination," Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(1), pages 27-88, February.
    5. Kothari, S. P., 2001. "Capital markets research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 105-231, September.
    6. van Ewijk, Casper & de Groot, Henri L.F. & Santing, A.J. (Coos), 2012. "A meta-analysis of the equity premium," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 819-830.
    7. Mathieu Rochon & Stéphanie Desrosiers & Jean-François L’Her, 2004. "Révision à la baisse de la prime sur les actions au Canada," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 80(1), pages 137-170.
    8. John B. Carlson & Eduard A. Pelz & Mark E. Wohar, 2001. "Will the valuation ratios revert to their historical means? Some evidence from breakpoint tests," Working Papers (Old Series) 0113, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    9. Jean-Pierre Danthine & Xiangrong Jin, 2007. "Intangible capital, corporate valuation and asset pricing," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(1), pages 157-177, July.
    10. Efstathios Avdis & Jessica A. Wachter, 2013. "Maximum likelihood estimation of the equity premium," NBER Working Papers 19684, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Sialm, Clemens, 2006. "Stochastic taxation and asset pricing in dynamic general equilibrium," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 511-540, March.
    12. Fernandez, Pablo & Aguirreamalloa, Javier & Liechtenstein, Heinrich, 2009. "The equity premium puzzle: High required equity premium, undervaluation and self fulfilling prophecy," IESE Research Papers D/821, IESE Business School.
    13. Thorsten Hens & Sabine Elmiger, 2019. "Economic Foundations for Finance," Springer Texts in Business and Economics, Springer, number 978-3-030-05427-4, January.
    14. John Y. Campbell, 2000. "Asset Pricing at the Millennium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1515-1567, August.
    15. Polk, Christopher & Thompson, Samuel & Vuolteenaho, Tuomo, 2006. "Cross-sectional forecasts of the equity premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 101-141, July.
    16. Remzi Uctum & Georges Prat & Fredj Jawadi, 2025. "Fundamental Valuation of Equities under Allocative Rationality," Working Papers hal-05158099, HAL.
    17. Allan Hodgson & John Okunev, 2022. "Long term equity risk premiums in the UK and US: A cautionary tale of weak mean reversion," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(17), pages 1728-1744, November.
    18. Christopher Polk & Samuel Thompson & Tuomo Vuolteenaho, 2004. "New Forecasts of the Equity Premium," NBER Working Papers 10406, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Berg, Tobias & Kaserer, Christoph, 2008. "Linking credit risk premia to the equity premium," CEFS Working Paper Series 2008-01, Technische Universität München (TUM), Center for Entrepreneurial and Financial Studies (CEFS).
    20. Samih Azar, 2011. "Retesting the CCAPM Euler equations," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 7(4), pages 324-346, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G - Financial Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpfi:0403004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: EconWPA The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask EconWPA to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.