As an aside, not disagreeing at all, here are two good rules of thumb for this sort of comparison--

* Ignore the CAPE of a small country whose market is totally dominated by just a couple/few huge firms. In that case, there is no particular reason to expect mean reversion on the theory that market-cap-to-GDP-ratios should have a normal level, it's just a bet on the fortunes of those specific companies. Consider instead the CAPE of the region in which the company lies.

* Ignore the CAPE of a country compared to other countries (mostly). Instead, compare the CAPE of a country or region to the historic average of that area's CAPE. Several years ago there was a poster quite tempted by the CAPE of 8 in the Russian market, and several folks pointed out that that's close to the usual figure (historical median 9.15 if you're wondering), not a cheap figure. Time has passed, and the reason has become clearer to all.

In an older table of mine, the historical median for Brazil was 17.3, so if both that figure and the figure in the "idea farm" table are correct, then the current 11.8 does seem pretty cheap.
This is a table that only goes up to mid 2012, but might still be of some use for a sense of scale

                     Min          Max        Median
Australia            7.65        31.60        17.15
Austria              6.04        59.11        26.80
Belgium              4.88        29.49        14.89
Brazil              11.04        29.73        17.34
Canada               5.83        63.33        19.85
Chile                9.71        32.95        20.93
China               14.30        61.98        24.40
France               6.20        57.16        19.92
Germany              7.83        56.86        17.90
Greece               1.95        39.81        15.91
Hong Kong            8.55        34.55        18.16
India               12.69        47.80        24.56
Indonesia            5.05        34.96        16.37
Ireland              3.02        18.25        10.94
Italy                5.92        52.91        21.66
Japan               13.27        94.25        43.89
Malaysia             7.77        26.50        18.49
Mexico              11.69        35.33        19.62
Netherlands          4.62        38.52        11.95
Portugal             7.02        39.36        16.43
Russia               5.13        22.88         9.15
Singapore            9.40        37.80        21.96
South Africa        10.16        24.12        16.22
South Korea          4.74        27.65        17.84
Spain                7.25        40.06        17.33
Sweden               4.82        74.18        19.54
Switzerland          7.12        57.94        18.16
Taiwan               9.18        42.28        19.43
Thailand             3.00        17.97        11.48
Turkey               8.24        42.96        17.02
UK                   4.43        28.69        11.84
USA                  4.72        45.08        14.63

It might be fun to compare the current levels in your linked table to the median levels in this table.

Jim

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