Irrational Exuberance

Robert Shiller's book provides a wide‐ranging view of the economics of the equity market. It is aimed at a lay audience, but will be of interest to students of stock market history, finance economists and practitioners. His central objective, like that of many of his scholarly papers, is to show that the stock market is inefficient. He argues that it is influenced by uninformed investors who believe that they can free‐ride on professional research and secure exceptional long term returns with little risk or effort. Collectively, these investors have driven the stock market to an overvalued level, threatening years of underperformance. His message is that we should be prepared for this, relying upon a higher level of saving, rather than double‐digit capital gains, to pay for our retirement plans. This is a persuasive thesis, supported by his interpretation of the relevant literature in finance and psychology. At its simplest, the first chapter shows that the market's price/earnings ratio is mean‐reverting. This observation suggests that the ratio is currently too high and must fall back, as it did after the peaks of 1929 and 1966. Shiller argues that this adjustment will occur through exceptionally weak price performance rather than exceptional earnings and dividend growth

Behavioral economics · Dividend · Earnings · Earnings growth · Economics · Equity (law · Financial economics · Irrational number · Monetary economics · Political science · Stock (firearms · Stock market · Finance · Financial Markets and Investment Strategies · Law