Historical CAPE Suggests 3.2 Percent Equities Growth

High valuations roughly correlate with lower expected returns, but even for value investors that can’t be the only the metric you look at as cheap is not the same thing as good value. Accounting for growth drivers and some limiting factors in addition to CAPE makes Sweden, Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Taiwan the most attractive equities markets for the new year, argue JP Morgan analysts David Shairp and Patrik Schöwitz.

CAPE and dividend yields give conflicting growth predictions

“History suggests that at the cur­rent CAPE of 22.9x, real returns could average 3.2% per annum over the next decade, with a percentile rank of 88%,” they write. These returns are broadly in line with consensus estimates for 2014 equities growth, though it’s...