Overvalued market going even higher: a technician thinks so

A friend sent me a comment by Richard Russell of the Dow Theory Letters, which Russell has been writing since 1954.  (He’s getting old.)  Russell refers to Robert Shiller’s price-earnings ratio, in which “p” is the current price and “e” is the average inflation-adjusted earnings of the past ten years.  Russell states the following:

“We are now 53.3% above the average P/E of the preceding decade. There have been only three times when valuations calculated by this method were higher -- the late 1920s, the late 1950s and 2007 just before the bull market ended. Judging from current valuations, we are either near the beginning of a bear market -- or facing a decade of sub-par performance from stocks."

 

Paradox: As a technician, Russell nonetheless sees the potential of a big upside breakout in the Dow.