With this in mind, I draw your attention to the extreme right of figure 4-3. Look at the period 1995 through early 1999, during which price rose well above Shiller’s estimate of fundamental value. Note that figure 4-3 ends in January 1999, at which time the dividend yield on the S&P 500 had fallen further, to 1.26 percent. The trailing P/E stood at a record 32.7!
Like Campbell and shille, some Wall Street strategists also placed the market’s rise of 1995 and 1996 in historical context. For example, Edward Kerschner, a strategist at Paine Webber, had been bullish during the market’s climb in 1995 and 1996 but then turned bearish. In a June 1997 article that appeared in Barron’s he stated, “In’87 the market went to 135 percent of fair value, and in’73 we got to 155 percent of fair value’’ Kerschner went on to note that according to his P/E model, the market was 15 percent overvalued, making it the third most expensive market in a quarter of a century.
In a related vein, Charles Lee, James Myers, and Bhaskaran Swaminathan (1999) devised an intrinsic of the Dow Jones In dustrial Average besed upon the book-to-market ratio,the long-term return on equity, expected earnings growth, and interest rates. In mid June of 1997,when Kerschner indicated that the market was 15 percent overvalued, the Lee-Myers-Swaminathan measure indicated that the Dow was 42 percent overvalued
Kerschner har not been as steadfast in his stated view as some aca-demic scholars have been. Strategists are subject to different pressures than scholars. During strong bull markets, bears become unpopular on Wall Steet. In early 1999,as the P/E 0f the S&P 500 hit a record