Cathie Wood says there’s a stock bubble but it’s not in tech

Since the commencement of the pandemic, the banal marketplace has been reddish hot. Stock prices person hit all-time highs, buoyed by low involvement rates, the rise of retail trading, and government stimulus checks. Startups entering the banal marketplace for the archetypal clip raised much wealth than ever successful 2020—and past doubled that total successful 2021. Some wonder whether we’re in a bubble akin to the dot-com roar of the precocious 1990s.

Cathie Wood, the rockstar banal picker known for making bold bets connected disruptive tech companies, rejects the comparison. There mightiness beryllium a bubble successful the market, she argued successful a Dec. 17 blog post, but it has thing to bash with tech stocks. Instead, she wrote, it’s the investments we usually deliberation of arsenic “safe bets”—namely, scale funds—which person seen their prices emergence beyond their underlying value.

In defence of the “stay astatine home” stocks

Usually, erstwhile marketplace watchers fret astir a banal bubble, they’re reasoning astir tech startups similar Zoom and Peloton, which saw their stock prices soar arsenic precocious arsenic 10 times their archetypal worth during the pandemic. Investors drove up the worth of these stocks arsenic the satellite locked down, betting that the companies that developed the tools for work, shopping, exercise, and connecting with loved ones from location would payment from the pandemic.

But arsenic soon arsenic affluent nations began rolling retired vaccines and their citizens began spending clip retired of the house, these alleged “stay astatine home” stocks tanked.

Wood’s concern firm, ARK Invest, holds a batch of “stay astatine home” stock. In fact, Wood has bought adjacent much shares of companies similar Zoom, the telehealth level Teladoc, and the physics signature institution DocuSign, while other investors sell. She argues that aft 11 months of freefall, these stocks “have entered heavy worth territory” and are trading astatine a discount comparative to their net and imaginable for growth.

She illustrated her constituent with a array comparing the nosedives these stocks person taken to the dependable gains they’ve made connected cardinal concern measures similar quarterly gross astatine EBITDA, a unsmooth measurement of a company’s profitability. Here’s a condensed mentation of her chart:

Wood argues the coagulated fiscal show these companies person reported is grounds that “stay astatine home” stocks are inactive applicable successful a hybrid world, wherever radical task backmost extracurricular but clasp immoderate of the habits they picked up during the pandemic. “The coronavirus situation permanently changed the mode the satellite works, catapulting consumers and businesses into the integer property overmuch faster and deeper than different would person been the case,” she wrote.

Index funds are trading adjacent grounds valuations

Meanwhile, Wood argues, investors person been overestimating the worth of scale funds, which purpose to trim hazard by blindly buying a wide swath of stocks from the biggest companies connected the market. Fearing ostentation and the economical fallout from an omicron-fueled surge successful covid-19 cases, much investors person been pulling retired of risky funds similar ARK successful favour of the stableness of scale funds.

But Woods argues that funds benchmarked to banal marketplace indexes similar the S&P 500 person reached inflated valuations retired of proportionality to their underlying performance.

The terms of an S&P 500 money has reached grounds highs successful caller weeks, and the banal index’s price-to-earnings ratio has hovered above emblematic levels during the pandemic. (The price-to-earnings ratio gives you a unsmooth thought of however overpriced a banal is by comparing the terms of a stock of the company’s banal to the magnitude of gross a institution earns. The higher the ratio, the much costly the banal is comparative to its existent concern performance.)

The banal marketplace bubble is successful the oculus of the beholder

To beryllium sure, the price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 inactive pales successful examination to that of “stay astatine home” stocks similar Zoom. Zoom’s ratio of astir 54 is much than treble the S&P’s ratio of astir 24.

But, arsenic Woods points out, those “stay astatine home” stocks person seen their valuations determination person to reality, portion the terms of scale funds are starting to interval supra the underlying show of the businesses they represent. A cautious capitalist could cull the volatility of ARK Invest’s portfolio successful favour of the slower, steadier maturation of an scale fund. But a much assertive capitalist mightiness broadside with Wood, who believes scale funds are overvalued and volition bring disappointing returns implicit the adjacent decade.

The bubble, successful different words, is successful the oculus of the beholder.