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The week's question
In March 2025, in the thread "Re: OT, out", Umm asked the members: "Do you think it is because America is made up of magical soil that makes businesses based in America magically profitable?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Investment Strategies / Mechanical Investing
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Author: mungofitch ✹✺🐝 SILVER
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Number: of 6243 
Subject: Re: OT = large cap valuations
Date: 08/30/24 9:19 AM
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I hate to break this to you, but the Fed model has gone the way of the dodo bird. It is extinct and useless.

Quoting from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org - Fed model
Lack of predictive power
* The analysis shows that the Fed model has no power to forecast long term stock returns
* In 2018, Ned Davis Research ran a test of the Fed model's ability to predict subsequent 10-year returns using data from the previous 75 years. Davis found that "it was basically worthless"
* In April 2014, Dr. Yardeni wrote of his Fed model: "[1997] was just about when the model stopped working as a useful investment tool. "


An even better debunking is from 2003, Clifford Asness' article "Fight the Fed Model", which pointed out that it didn't even work *IN* sample - there was only a specific range of dates that it ever looked plausible, it never worked before or since. I recommend finding and reading that article, it has some interesting insights. The biggest is simply that the prevailing interest rates at the time you buy stocks aren't a predictor of the multi-year forward stock returns, but that (duh) the valuation level of stocks at purchase time is an excellent predictor. But there is other great stuff in there, like an analysis showing that the trajectory of stock profits is almost perfectly adjusted for inflation. Which makes some sense: on average, if all parts and labour and sales prices all go up 10%, profits will go up 10% as well.

Jim

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This community has written 6,227 posts about Mechanical Investing. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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