Sauce for the goose

“Not only is the company valued at more than $100 million, but its website (and even its investor relations page !) is written in Comic Sans – the cheesiest of all fonts.”

-      Alison Griswold of Slate covers the IPO of the Grilled Cheese Truck, Inc., 5th February 2015.

At first, it seemed that the grilled cheese food truck company valued at $107 million might mark the top for the US stock market, but that was clearly premature. Then it seemed that the IPO of a profitless web business granting no shareholder voting rights valued at $28 billion might mark the top of the market, but that turned out to be premature too. Perhaps the inability of President Trump to repeal Obamacare might do what grilled cheese and Snapchat failed to do, and finally and conclusively mark the top of a frothy market, given that much of the valuation has been driven by expectations around political change that now look more than a little overheated. And if the Obamacare defeat isn’t sufficient to turn the market around, perhaps the launch of Mike Tyson’s brokerage offering 400 times leverage might be.

So it’s clearly time to republish our weekly glimpse at Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted P/E for the US market, which now stands at just under 29 times, versus a long run average of roughly 17. Did someone use the word ‘unsustainable’ ?

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