Many financial professionals still start each year discussing the outlook for economic growth and what this will mean for the market. The start of this year threw up thousands of examples of this sort of logic. A seemingly universal observation in December 2017 — but not for the bearish Mr Edwards — was that US economic output was expected to rise and that US equities would benefit.
Yet, strangely, there still exists minimal empirical data to support the idea that economic growth is the main driver of stock market returns. In fact most studies have shown the correlation to be quite weak in many countries.
[...]
A MSCI Barra research paper that assessed various different studies on the matter concluded that “we may intuitively think of stock returns as a result of the underlying real economy growth. However, we have observed that long-term real earnings growth fell behind long-term GDP growth in many countries over the observed period”.
It is perhaps understandable that many remained shocked by the idea that, just possibly, we are all habitually fetishising economic data. Particularly when it has a weak correlation with what we really need to know amid the ongoing theatre and fanfare that certain economic data releases arouse.
Yet, strangely, there still exists minimal empirical data to support the idea that economic growth is the main driver of stock market returns. In fact most studies have shown the correlation to be quite weak in many countries.
[...]
A MSCI Barra research paper that assessed various different studies on the matter concluded that “we may intuitively think of stock returns as a result of the underlying real economy growth. However, we have observed that long-term real earnings growth fell behind long-term GDP growth in many countries over the observed period”.
It is perhaps understandable that many remained shocked by the idea that, just possibly, we are all habitually fetishising economic data. Particularly when it has a weak correlation with what we really need to know amid the ongoing theatre and fanfare that certain economic data releases arouse.
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