Subject: Re: Current Price To Peak Book...
From 2000-2023 sales per share of the S&P500 went from 780 to 1714, not adjusting for inflation. That is 3.6% per year. Adjusting for inflation of around 3%, sales per share have almost not increased at all since 2000, even after all the buybacks. Not much growth - in fact, none. For each dollar invested today, we are getting only about the same real sales that we got when investing even in 2000. You'd think that waiting 23 years is a long time for such little improvement in business.

Real annual sales per share growth of the S&P500 was higher looking back 100 years, in the 1% to 2% range. Business has slowed down a little the last 23 years.

CPI at 2000 yearend was 174. Latest CPI is 301.648. So 780 sales in 2000 translates to (301.648/174) * 780 = 1,352.22 in today's dollars.

1352 increasing to 1714 over 23 years is a compound annual growth rate of 1.04%

Seems to me we are at the lower end, but still within the historical range 1 to 2 percent growth for real annual sales per share.