The stock market does not work the way most people think. A commonly held belief — on Main Street as well as on Wall Street — is that a stock-market boom is the reflection of a progressing economy: as the economy improves, companies make more money, and their stock value rises in accordance with the increase in their intrinsic value. A major assumption underlying this belief is that consumer confidence and consequent consumer spending are drivers of economic growth.
A stock-market bust, on the other hand, is held to result from a drop in consumer and business confidence and spending — due to inflation, rising oil prices, high interest rates, etc., or for no reason at all — that leads to declining business profits and rising unemployment. Whatever the supposed cause, in the common view a weakening economy results in falling company revenues and lower-than-expected future earnings, resulting in falling intrinsic values and falling stock prices.
This understanding of bull and bear markets, while held by academics, investment professionals, and individual investors alike, is technically correct if viewed superficially but is substantially misconceived because it is based on faulty finance and economic theory.
In fact, the only real force that ultimately makes the stock market or any market rise (and, to a large extent, fall) over the longer term is simply changes in the quantity of money and the volume of spending in the economy. Stocks rise when there is inflation of the money supply (i.e., more money in the economy and in the markets). This truth has many consequences that should be considered.
Since stock markets can fall — and fall often — to various degrees for numerous reasons (including a decline in the quantity of money and spending), our focus here will be only on why they are able to rise in a sustained fashion over the longer term.
The following factors are considered as necessary points of Fundamental Analysis ! There are two types of stock:
A stock-market bust, on the other hand, is held to result from a drop in consumer and business confidence and spending — due to inflation, rising oil prices, high interest rates, etc., or for no reason at all — that leads to declining business profits and rising unemployment. Whatever the supposed cause, in the common view a weakening economy results in falling company revenues and lower-than-expected future earnings, resulting in falling intrinsic values and falling stock prices.
This understanding of bull and bear markets, while held by academics, investment professionals, and individual investors alike, is technically correct if viewed superficially but is substantially misconceived because it is based on faulty finance and economic theory.
In fact, the only real force that ultimately makes the stock market or any market rise (and, to a large extent, fall) over the longer term is simply changes in the quantity of money and the volume of spending in the economy. Stocks rise when there is inflation of the money supply (i.e., more money in the economy and in the markets). This truth has many consequences that should be considered.
Since stock markets can fall — and fall often — to various degrees for numerous reasons (including a decline in the quantity of money and spending), our focus here will be only on why they are able to rise in a sustained fashion over the longer term.
The following factors are considered as necessary points of Fundamental Analysis ! There are two types of stock:
Common stock
Preferred stock
Most of the stock held by individuals is common stock.
Common Stock
Common stock represents the majority of stock held by the
public. It has voting rights, along with the right to share in dividends.
When you hear or read about “stocks” being up or
down, it always refers to common stock.
Preferred Stock
Despite its name, preferred stock has fewer rights than
common stock, except in one important area – dividends. Companies that issue
preferred stocks usually pay consistent dividends and preferred stock has first
call on dividends over common stock.
Investors buy preferred stock for its current
income from dividends, so look for companies that make big profits to use
preferred stock to return some of those profits via dividends.
Liquidity
Another benefit of common stocks is that they are highly
liquid for the most part. Small and/or obscure companies may not trade
frequently, but most of the larger companies trade daily creating an
opportunity to buy or sell shares.
Thanks to the stock markets, you can buy or sell
shares of most publicly traded companies almost any day the markets are open.
ECONOMIC
FORECAST:-
First and foremost in a top-down approach would be an overall
evaluation of the general economy. The economy is like the tide and the various
industry groups and individual companies are like boats. When the economy
expands, most industry groups and companies benefit and grow. When the economy
declines, most sectors and companies usually suffer. Many economists link
economic expansion and contraction to the level of interest rates. Interest
rates are seen as a leading indicator for the stock market as well.
Below is a
chart of the S&P 500 and the yield on the 10-year note over the last 30
years. Although not exact, a correlation between stock prices and interest
rates can be seen. Once a scenario for the overall economy has been developed,
an investor can break down the economy into its various industry groups.
Generally
if the stock market index rises, stock market is functioning well. And if the
index goes down then the stock market position is not better. Considering from
the past years the index is going on rising. It means that the companies stocks
of say NSE – 50 Stocks, BSE – 30 Stocks, performs better or moderate (not lower
than the average)
Here if the sensex or Nifty rises or lowers then the stock market
varies! But an another point is to be noted that only 50 and 30 stocks alone
are not present, and more than several thousands of stocks are present both in
NSE and BSE.
So that the
Index is not an actual Replica of the entire stock market.
The primary link between the stock market and the economy — in the
aggregate — is that an increase in money and credit pushes up both GDP
and the stock market simultaneously.
A progressing economy is one in which more goods are being produced over time. It is real "stuff," not money per se, which represents real wealth. The more cars, refrigerators, food, clothes, medicines, and hammocks we have, the better off our lives. We saw above that, if goods are produced at a faster rate than money, prices will fall. With a constant supply of money, wages would remain the same while prices fell, because the supply of goods would increase while the supply of workers would not. But even when prices rise due to money being created faster than goods, prices still fall in real terms, because wages rise faster than prices. In either scenario, if productivity and output are increasing, goods get cheaper in real terms.
Obviously, then, a growing economy consists of prices falling, not rising. No matter how many goods are produced, if the quantity of money remains constant, the only money that can be spent in an economy is the particular amount of money existing in it (and velocity, or the number of times each dollar is spent, could not change very much if the money supply remained unchanged).
This alone reveals that GDP does not necessarily tell us much about the number of actual goods and services being produced; it only tells us that if (even real) GDP is rising, the money supply must be increasing, since a rise in GDP is mathematically possible only if the money price of individual goods produced is increasing to some degree.[5] Otherwise, with a constant supply of money and spending, the total amount of money companies earn — the total selling prices of all goods produced — and thus GDP itself would all necessarily remain constant year after year.
The same concept would apply to the stock market: if there were a constant amount of money in the economy, the sum total of all shares of all stocks taken together (or a stock index) could not increase. Plus, if company profits, in the aggregate, were not increasing, there would be no aggregate increase in earnings per share to be imputed into stock prices.
In an economy where the quantity of money was static, the levels of stock indexes, year by year, would stay approximately even, or drift slightly lower[6] — depending on the rate of increase in the number of new shares issued. And, overall, businesses (in the aggregate) would be selling a greater volume of goods at lower prices, and total revenues would remain the same. In the same way, businesses, overall, would purchase more goods at lower prices each year, keeping the spread between costs and revenues about the same, which would keep aggregate profits about the same.
Under these circumstances, capital gains (the profiting from the buying low and selling high of assets) could be made only by stock picking — by investing in companies that are expanding market share, bringing to market new products, etc., thus truly gaining proportionately more revenues and profits at the expense of those companies that are less innovative and efficient.
The stock prices of the gaining companies would rise while others fell. Since the average stock would not actually increase in value, most of the gains made by investors from stocks would be in the form of dividend payments. By contrast, in our world today, most stocks — good and bad ones — rise during inflationary bull markets and decline during bear markets. The good companies simply rise faster than the bad.
Similarly, housing prices under static money would actually fall slowly — unless their value was significantly increased by renovations and remodeling. Older houses would sell for much less than newer houses. To put this in perspective, consider that if our rate of inflation were high enough, used cars would rise in price just like new cars, only at a slower rate — but just about everything would increase in price, as it does in countries with hyperinflation The amount by which a home "increases in value" over 30 years really just represents the amount of purchasing power that the dollars we hold have lost: while the dollars lost purchasing power, the house — and other assets more limited in supply growth — kept its purchasing power.
Since we have seen that neither the stock market nor GDP can rise on a sustained basis without more money pushing them higher, we can now clearly understand that an improving economy neither consists of an increasing GDP nor does it cause the overall stock market to rise.
This is not to say that a link does not exist between the money that companies earn and their value on the stock exchange in our inflationary world today, but that the parameters of that link — valuation relationships such as earnings ratios and stock-market capitalization as a percent of GDP — are rather flexible, and as we will see below, change over time. Money sometimes flows more into stocks and at other times more into the underlying companies, changing the balance of the valuation relationships.
A progressing economy is one in which more goods are being produced over time. It is real "stuff," not money per se, which represents real wealth. The more cars, refrigerators, food, clothes, medicines, and hammocks we have, the better off our lives. We saw above that, if goods are produced at a faster rate than money, prices will fall. With a constant supply of money, wages would remain the same while prices fell, because the supply of goods would increase while the supply of workers would not. But even when prices rise due to money being created faster than goods, prices still fall in real terms, because wages rise faster than prices. In either scenario, if productivity and output are increasing, goods get cheaper in real terms.
Obviously, then, a growing economy consists of prices falling, not rising. No matter how many goods are produced, if the quantity of money remains constant, the only money that can be spent in an economy is the particular amount of money existing in it (and velocity, or the number of times each dollar is spent, could not change very much if the money supply remained unchanged).
This alone reveals that GDP does not necessarily tell us much about the number of actual goods and services being produced; it only tells us that if (even real) GDP is rising, the money supply must be increasing, since a rise in GDP is mathematically possible only if the money price of individual goods produced is increasing to some degree.[5] Otherwise, with a constant supply of money and spending, the total amount of money companies earn — the total selling prices of all goods produced — and thus GDP itself would all necessarily remain constant year after year.
"Consider that if our rate of inflation
were high enough, used cars would rise in price just like new cars, only
at a slower rate."
The same concept would apply to the stock market: if there were a constant amount of money in the economy, the sum total of all shares of all stocks taken together (or a stock index) could not increase. Plus, if company profits, in the aggregate, were not increasing, there would be no aggregate increase in earnings per share to be imputed into stock prices.
In an economy where the quantity of money was static, the levels of stock indexes, year by year, would stay approximately even, or drift slightly lower[6] — depending on the rate of increase in the number of new shares issued. And, overall, businesses (in the aggregate) would be selling a greater volume of goods at lower prices, and total revenues would remain the same. In the same way, businesses, overall, would purchase more goods at lower prices each year, keeping the spread between costs and revenues about the same, which would keep aggregate profits about the same.
Under these circumstances, capital gains (the profiting from the buying low and selling high of assets) could be made only by stock picking — by investing in companies that are expanding market share, bringing to market new products, etc., thus truly gaining proportionately more revenues and profits at the expense of those companies that are less innovative and efficient.
The stock prices of the gaining companies would rise while others fell. Since the average stock would not actually increase in value, most of the gains made by investors from stocks would be in the form of dividend payments. By contrast, in our world today, most stocks — good and bad ones — rise during inflationary bull markets and decline during bear markets. The good companies simply rise faster than the bad.
Similarly, housing prices under static money would actually fall slowly — unless their value was significantly increased by renovations and remodeling. Older houses would sell for much less than newer houses. To put this in perspective, consider that if our rate of inflation were high enough, used cars would rise in price just like new cars, only at a slower rate — but just about everything would increase in price, as it does in countries with hyperinflation The amount by which a home "increases in value" over 30 years really just represents the amount of purchasing power that the dollars we hold have lost: while the dollars lost purchasing power, the house — and other assets more limited in supply growth — kept its purchasing power.
Since we have seen that neither the stock market nor GDP can rise on a sustained basis without more money pushing them higher, we can now clearly understand that an improving economy neither consists of an increasing GDP nor does it cause the overall stock market to rise.
This is not to say that a link does not exist between the money that companies earn and their value on the stock exchange in our inflationary world today, but that the parameters of that link — valuation relationships such as earnings ratios and stock-market capitalization as a percent of GDP — are rather flexible, and as we will see below, change over time. Money sometimes flows more into stocks and at other times more into the underlying companies, changing the balance of the valuation relationships.
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