Stocks are overpriced, overleveraged, headed for trouble

Wednesday, March 25, 2015
By Paul Martin

By ANORA MAHMUDOVA
MarketWatch.com
Mar 25, 2015

Office of Financial Research: high valuations and high debt levels pose risks

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Wall Street can’t say it hasn’t been warned.

The Office of Financial Research, the agency tasked with promoting financial stability and keeping an eye on markets released a paper last week, stating that the stock market is dangerously overpriced while excessive leverage will exacerbate the next market correction.

The paper is aptly titled “Quicksilver Markets” alluding that when prices deflate it will happen swiftly and not without pain.

“The timing of market shocks is difficult, if not impossible, to identify in advance, let alone quantify — a shock, by definition, is unexpected,” wrote Ted Berg, an analyst at OFR.

But Berg identified several indicators that are pointing to a correction. Instead of looking at valuation in isolation, Berg and his team analyzed other factors, such as corporate profits and leverage, and found a disturbing picture.

He argued that forward price-to-earnings ratios are not very good predictors of market downturns, as they tend to be biased during boom times, but other metrics, such as the so-called CAPE ratio, Q-ratio and Buffett indicator all offer warning signs.

The Rest…HERE

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