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The whole thing is laughable. Very little bad debt was defaulted--most of it is hidden on the fed's balance sheet or by mark-to-magic accounting. Banks are le

The whole thing is laughable. Very little bad debt was defaulted--most of it is hidden on the fed's balance sheet or by mark-to-magic accounting. Banks are letting people live mortgage-free to avoid booking a loss. The CRE, Prime, option ARM, and ARM problems are just getting started. And then there's this: http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/xls/index/SP500EPSEST.XLS http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/xls/index/SP500EPSEST.X... H-50: A PE ratio of 116. This quarter is 118 so far. (!!!) Anything over 20 has been traditionally considered bearish. What do the people in-the-know think about this? http://www.zerohedge.com/article/las-weeks-insiders-transactions-5-buys-134-million-145-sells-1-billion http://www.zerohedge.com/article/las-weeks-insiders-transact...

nostrademons 17y ago
Couple comments on those metrics: 1.) The value of a stock's supposed to reflect its earnings over all future time, not just current earnings. That's why stocks don't instantly fall to 0 when a company has a bad quarter. Earnings are at a low point now; a P/E of 118 implies that investors think they will get better soon. Whether they're right remains to be seen. 2.) Insider selling itself doesn't mean much. Many directors and executives receive a large portion of their compensation in stock; they're always selling, because that's how they get cash to spend. I'm curious how it stacks up to pre-crisis ratios though.