“It’s quite… too quiet.”

– Elmer Fudd

As I sat down to write this column highlighting elevated market valuations I was greeted by the following Bloomberg headline: “U.S. consumer confidence falls in September to a five-month low.” It was a timely reminder that soft data (e.g., surveys about how people feel) tends to express a more pessimistic viewpoint than hard data (i.e., data based on what people actually do), a theme that has been highlighted in this space several times over the years.

One way to consider stock market valuations is the Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings Ratio, which is often referred to as the Shiller P/E Ratio given it was pioneered by Robert Shiller in his book, Irrational Exuberance . The ratio is derived by dividing the current index price by the aver

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