10k Words - September 2020
Apparently , Confucius didn’t say “One Picture is Worth Ten Thousand Words” after all. It was an advertisement in a 1920s trade journal for the use of images in advertisements on the sides of streetcars. Even without the credibility of Confucius behind it, we think this saying has merit. Each month we share a few charts or images we consider noteworthy. Valuation is at the fore this month, starting with the simplistic view of the forward P/E multiple on the S&P 500 being right up at "dot com" boom levels, via The Felder Report. FactorInvestor shows the composition of the S&P 500 has shifted such that the top five "Tech Titans" are a larger part of the index now than they were in that boom twenty years ago. Apple's market cap is now greater than the national aggregate of stocks in countries like Germany - something unimaginable 10 years earlier - but now Apple, Microsoft and Amazon all have market caps greater than Australia's market aggregate. And