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Re:Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad? by nostrademons on Sunday May 10, 2020 @12:58PM (#23134111)
From that perspective, the stock market should have no volatility in share prices whatsoever - it should fairly value each company based on their profits over the next 15 to 20 years, and since those profits don't change, neither should the share price.

Stocks are based on expectations of future profits, i.e. psychology. "In the long run, the stock market is a weighing machine. In the short run, it's a voting machine."

Few investors' psychology will let them look at a year of bad news and still think "Oh, it's going to get better in the future." After about 3 months you start doubting yourself and wondering if maybe you were wrong in the first place, and you've entered a brave new world where people randomly die and commerce or long-term plans are impossible. All of the economic data - corporate earnings, employment, share prices, etc. - will reflect the new normal, so there's no reason (other than your memory of what the '10s were like) to believe that share prices would always go up.

Re:Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad? by shoo on Sunday May 10, 2020 @04:42PM (#23135987)
> stock market should have no volatility in share prices whatsoever - it should fairly value each company based on their profits over the next 15 to 20 years

Computing this depends on estimating/forecasting/extrapolating/guessing a lot of values. E.g. what kind of revenue growth the company will have. How the structure of company expenses may change. Parameters like a discount rate make a huge difference in the estimated value. In many cases the majority of the value for a discounted cash flow valuation of a stock comes from the tail term where you give up trying to unroll the contribution for each year and make a simpler approximation of what the company will be doing 20 years+ in the future.

The computed share value has a lot of sensitivity to adjusting some of these inputs, and in many cases it is not at all obvious what values parameters should be set to.

Re:Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad? by nostrademons on Sunday May 10, 2020 @04:53PM (#23136064)
But that's the point. Parent poster is assuming that the future profits of a company won't change over the next 15-20 years because of coronavirus. Everyone in this subthread is pointing out that that's not a valid assumption. We've already seen the discount rate drop to zero in the last couple months. Will it stay there? Will we get hyperinflation? Will we get deflation as laid-off workers lose their spending power? Will the target market of many companies end up dead? Will companies go bankrupt through lack of cash flow? Are we going to see civil unrest or a breakdown of political authority?

Many of these are permanent consequences that will absolutely effect earnings 15-20 years in the future. The market seems to be pricing in an assumption that this will be a blip: we'll reopen, businesses will rehire, and 2021 will look much like 2019. I don't believe that's likely.

Re:Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad? by Jommi on Sunday May 10, 2020 @05:27PM (#23136369)
I think you're nitpicking on the parent comment forgetting to add "estimated" before "future profits."