The cheapest stock markets in 2018

80-20 Investor is all about making it easy for subscribers to identify the best investment opportunities.

You may recall from the FREE email series you received when you first engaged with 80-20 Investor that one of the investment strategies, other than momentum investing, proven to work is value investing. So periodically I look at which global stock markets offer good value based on historical data.

What is 'value investing'

A value investor buys shares in companies that he/she believes are undervalued (that's why it's called value investing) by the market on the assumption that when reality catches up with the company fundamentals the share price will be revalued and they will make a profit.

To find value involves scrutinizing company balance sheets and accounts looking for the value that others can’t see, the earning potential that your peers are overlooking. However, determining ‘value’ is subjective and can be hit and miss. The investment landscape is littered with investors who misread the ‘value’ signs and got it wrong. Sometimes things are cheap for a reason and get cheaper as a result. Even value investing gurus like Warren Buffet get it wrong.

The 80-20 Investor algorithm was developed based around momentum, yet ultimately encapsulates the positives of value investing. A value investor may have identified a fund previously, yet will be waiting for the market to catch on. When it finally does the share price will go up, climbing up the share performance tables. At this point 80-20 Investors will buy it and ride the wave upwards.

Yet, the biggest drawback of value investing is finding simple reliable information with which to determine 'value'.

The best measure of 'value'

There are a wide range of measures that can be used to help determine a company's value yet perhaps the most reliable measure, and the one I favour, is something called the Cyclically adjusted Shiller P/E (or CAPE) for short.

It is a measure of value created by Nobel prize winning economist Robert Shiller and received much attention when it effectively predicted the US stock market crash of the late 1990s.

In a nutshell the CAPE measure looks at the price of a share compared to its earnings ability over the last 10 years. The bigger the number the more expensive the share is and the lower the CAPE the cheaper it is.

You can even use the CAPE for entire stock markets to get an overall measure of how expensive the market is, much like Shiller did before the stock market bubble burst in 2000. If a market is hugely expensive versus history then it could be a sign of a pending market correction. Similarly if a market is cheap it could be a sign of better days ahead. It all hinges on the market reverting back and forth across an historic median. The CAPE is sometimes used to predict future returns for stock markets based on history, although that has to be taken with a pinch of salt.

However it's not just about how big or small the CAPE figure is but how it compares to the market's (or company's) long term median. So you can see although it is a relatively simple measure, getting hold of the information is almost impossible.

Yet you must bear in mind CAPE is not a crystal ball. Three years ago the US stock market had a CAPE of 27.74, well above the long term average of 16. This made US shares eye-wateringly expensive and implied an expected annual return of less than zero over the next few years, or in other words to lose investors money. However, as we know that never transpired and the US stock market has risen further and now has a CAPE of 32. In fact 2017 was one of the best 12 months for US stocks in years. As you know I have been invested in the US with my own £50,000 portfolio benefiting from the strong returns since the US election.

The other issue is that US equities have been able to defy the CAPE reality because the Federal Reserve has been keeping markets afloat by printing money and keeping interest rates low. Essentially the market has been manipulated. Therein lies the problem with value measures. While 80-20 Investors have been making profits in the US stock market value investors have sat on the sidelines. A correction will occur but we have no way of telling exactly when. But that is why I may only use CAPE to help guide my decisions....

The cheapest stock markets in the world

Yet by combining the 80-20 Investor algorithm with a measure such as CAPE can be incredibly powerful and helpful. The table below summarises the CAPE values for stock markets around the world. The table is in alphabetical order. However, I have highlighted in green those markets that are cheaper than their historical median, while those that are more expensive are in red. I have also included an inception date which states the date from which data has been available. Clearly the older the inception date the more robust the analysis is, which has always been a snag when using CAPE for emerging markets where historic data is limited.

What leaps out is that developed markets are on the whole expensive by historical standards and value lies in emerging markets, Asia and also parts of Europe. Meanwhile the UK is the only market that is deemed fair value. Overall the value on offer in equity markets is down from a year ago, unsurprisingly following the stellar rally of 2017.

Market	Current CAPE	Median CAPE	Inception Date
Australia	17.4	16.5	1969
Brazil	11.8	13.6	1994
Canada	20.7	19.7	1969
China	15.9	16.7	1995
France	19.8	19.1	1971
Germany	19.3	17.8	1969
Hong Kong	18.5	18.4	1972
India	21.3	20.9	1994
Indonesia	19.8	22.4	1992
Italy	14.6	18.9	1984
Japan	27.7	37.2	1969
Malaysia	16	21.1	1992
Mexico	21.5	22.8	1992
Poland	11.8	12	1995
Russia	5.7	6.3	1996
South Africa	20.3	19	1995
South Korea	15.1	14.9	1995
Spain	12.8	14.8	1980
Sweden	20.5	20.4	1969
Switzerland	25.1	20.2	1969
Taiwan	20.2	19.1	1995
Thailand	19.5	18.1	1992
Turkey	10.7	12.1	1992
UK	14.3	14.3	1969
US	32	16.1	1871

Regional Summaries

Market	Current CAPE	Median CAPE
Europe	16	17.3
Asia Ex-Japan	17.5	17.7
Global Developed	23	21.1
Emerging Markets	14.6	16.4

 

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