Thu 9 Oct 2008
I know PE Ratios are old-school, investor 101, hardly an indicator of much of anything, right? Well, I couldn’t help but see that today the S&P 500 had a PE Ratio of 11.57…. below the PE Ratio it had back at the end of 1988. For reference, PE Ratio of the S&P got as high as 32 (or 46 by some measures) and change in 2001 near the height of that bubblicious time, and the generally accepted PE historical average is 15.
For long-term investment value, a PE this low represents a tasty bargain. Rather than trying to time the market bottom, if you are a long-term investor with 20+ year time horizon, the S&P index is looking pretty good!