Jeremy Siegel Doesn't See a Stock Crash Anytime Soon

News August 21, 2023 at 03:47 PM
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Wharton economist Jeremy Siegel doesn't expect a massive stock market sell-off soon despite weaker performance this month, although he said tech stocks could get hit if Nvidia's outlook wavers when the chip manufacturing giant reports earnings this week.

"Will positive momentum come back to the market after this recent pullback? When we have a surge in equities and then a rate rise, we often can see the market settle back five to 10% and then we get another surge to breakout to new highs," the professor emeritus of finance wrote in his weekly column posted Monday on WisdomTree, for which he serves as senior economist.

"It is hard to say when that'll come, but certainly I don't see anything threatening the market that would erase more than another 5% or so from today's level," Siegel said. "Nvidia's earnings report this week is the next key test for technology stocks. Expectations are so high, if there's any degradation in the outlook for sales, this could cascade into further pressure for the AI darling and technology stocks."

Nvidia reports earnings after the market close Tuesday.

Addressing a surge in bond yields last week, Siegel noted that inflation-adjusted 10-year bonds are yielding just under 2%, the highest real yields in decades and up from -1.5% three years ago, which he called "a massive change."

Rising real yields affect equity valuations partly because they represent more competition for stocks, he noted. Thanks to Federal Reserve tightening over the past year-plus, investors can get almost 5.5% for short duration Treasurys now, "but these yields have reinvestment risk," as there's no guarantee these levels will be in place in one to two years, Siegel wrote.

Stocks currently are priced at a 3% risk premium over Treasury inflation-protected securities, roughly in line with their historical premium, according to the economist.

"This suggests stocks are currently priced on par with their past excess returns. Of course, both stocks and bonds are priced to deliver lower absolute levels than they did — but the reduction is now similar for both stocks and bonds," Siegel added.

Photo: Bloomberg

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