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6 Months Later: Opposite Reactions
By DAVID LEONHARDT
The passing of a crisis can have one of two effects on people's confidence. It can make them more attuned to the dangers they face, or it can leave them more confident.
The six months after Sept. 11, during which the economy was declared to be in recession and Enron (news/quote) collapsed, seem to have had roughly opposite effects on individual investors and the professionals who run large stock funds.
Individuals have emerged newly optimistic about the market, with many believing that any fall in prices will be temporary and that the market is fairly valued or even undervalued. Institutional investors have become more nervous about the risks of a market that remains near a record high, relative to corporate earnings.
These are the results of a monthly survey of investor sentiment to be released today by the Yale School of Management. The study's architect ・Robert J. Shiller, the author of "Irrational Exuberance" (Princeton University Press), a bearish book that appeared before the market's peak in 2000 ・calls the survey, which began in 1989, the oldest continuing study of investors' attitudes.
Those attitudes are important because they can help predict where the markets are headed. The optimism of individuals, despite the recent jitters of professional investors, suggests that the coming year could be a good one for stocks.
But the survey can also serve as a reality check. The long run-up in share prices since the 1987 crash has left many investors thinking that any decline will be brief, and the comeback of the market after Sept. 11 confirmed that notion to many people, said Professor Shiller, who teaches economics at Yale. History, however, suggests that share prices can remain stagnant for years.
The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index closed yesterday at 1,168.26, up less than 4 points but still enough for its fifth increase in the last seven trading days, as a series of economic reports have suggested the recession is ending. Since the steep market fall just after Sept. 11, the S.& P. index has climbed more than 20 percent. The major indexes are higher than at the close of business on Sept. 10.
Over the same span, the percentage of individuals who say that the market is fairly valued or undervalued has risen slightly, to 62 percent from 58 percent. But based on projected corporate earnings, stocks are more expensive today than they have been for nearly all of the last century.
The most telling change may have come in people's predictions about what will happen after a significant fall in the market. Many economists consider the performance of stocks from one day to the next to be independent.
Absent any other information, however, almost 80 percent of individual investors say the market will rise the day after a big drop, according to the Yale survey. Last summer, about 60 percent offered this optimistic answer. In 1990, less than 50 percent did.
The shift is hardly irrational, given the market's performance after the 1987 crash and 2001 decline. "We've been through a period of 20 years when the market has always rebounded," Professor Shiller said. "People think it's a lesson for the ages."
Their confidence comes despite investors' simultaneous belief, after Sept. 11, that a crash is more likely than it was at any point in the last decade, according to the survey. Individual investors simply think the market will quickly rebound from whatever turbulence that it hits.
The men and women who manage investments are more circumspect and seem to have been more shaken by recent events. The survey does not ask respondents for their reasons, but Professor Shiller said he suspected that individual investors might be concentrating on the patriotic response to Sept. 11, the absence of other attacks and the military successes in Afghanistan. Professional investors, on the other hand, might be thinking about Enron and worrying that many companies have exaggerated profits.
Only 60 percent of institutional investors said that stocks would rise the day after a big dip, down from about 75 percent last summer. About 45 percent of them say the market is not overvalued, down from 60 percent last summer.
The one answer to the survey that recent events did not seem to have changed is the one about what the market will do over the next 12 months. About 90 percent of individuals and 75 percent of professionals said it would rise. A decade ago, 65 percent of both groups believed that.
Today's prediction should go a long way toward fulfilling itself, unless investors decide ・as they did in the 1930's and to a lesser degree in the 1970's ・that their confidence has gotten ahead of itself.
"In the short run, the confidence is holding up terrifically," said Professor Shiller, who remains bearish about the next decade. "In the long run, the outlook is not good."
要約
昨年の９月以降の半年の間の二つの事件、テロとエンロンの会計疑惑の問題で、アメリカの株価は大きく下落したが、その後大きく値を戻し、Ｓ＆Ｐのインデックスは今や９月１０日の終値よりも高くなっている。個人の投資家の楽観論が市場の流れを作っており、投資家の大部分は株はまだ上がると考えている。しかし、専門家の予測は異なっている。
ブラックマンデーのような調整とその後の弱気相場が続く可能性がある。エール大学のシラー教授は言う「市場が大きくはね返った後の長い調整過程に入り口にある。人々はそれを歴史の教訓と考える。」
題名には必ず「阿修羅さんへ」と記述してください。