The conservative investor has a fear now, any asset that can be seen in the current market all seems overvalued. No matter what asset we look at: real estate, commodities, stocks, cryptocurrencies and even alternative investments seem overvalued.
So the question is is everything a bubble? Perhaps, if everything is a bubble, nothing is a bubble. Is there anything left that isn’t? In case there is something left that is not a bubble, what assets do not seem overvalued? No investor wants to buy an asset that is overvalued and could decline in the coming months. But Finding an asset that is not overvalued is getting difficult.
everything is a bubble
- Student debt in the US: This has continued to grow continuously and inexorably, without the pandemic seeming to have gone through it, without the new titles that are being offered remotely by platforms such as Coursera or EdX or new training alternatives (coding Bootcamps, school 42), seem to have made the slightest dent in the business of financing studies.
- Public debt relative to GDP: after the real estate crisis of 2008 and after the measures to favor the economy due to the 2022 pandemic, it does not stop growing as a higher percentage of GDP. United States, Spain, Germany or France there is no country that has not increased its public debt to unsuspected levels. In addition, the countries are financing themselves at very low prices compared to what one might expect from the market.
- Living place: the price of housing in Spain in May 2022 is located according to the real estate portal idealistic at €1805/m2, below the peak of €2,053 per square meter that it experienced in the summer of 2007, the peak of the bubble, but the Covid crisis does not seem to have affected it beyond a brief moment in June 2022 where it fell to €1,620/ m2. The drop in economic activity does not seem to have been accompanied by an equivalent drop in prices. Something similar is happening in the US, especially in hot markets, such as the San Francisco Bay, where the pandemic does not seem to have passed. In Chinese geographies, except for the brief break in the country’s confinement, housing continues to rise without stopping.
- Bitcoin and crypto assets: when bitcoin seemed to have exploded was at the end of 2022, its value had not recovered at the end of 2022. It is now above the values of the end of 2022, with a price of about 33,000 dollars, when just a few weeks ago it reached a peak about $63,000. Will it have exploded or will we see new price spikes in the original cryptocurrency? There are also voices that the incipient market of NFTs (Non Fungible Toquens through which “crypto-art works” have been sold) has collapsed. Will we see it grow back?
- Tech companies: although they had the advantage that in the Covid era they could distribute their products and services with hardly any physical contact, so it is normal that they could maintain their level of activity. But there are voices who think there could be a bubble, seeing how the Price Per Earnings Ratio of companies listed on the Nasdaq rises. Special mention is Tesla, who has come to be worth more than its six direct competitors, despite selling fewer units and having fewer profits, if not losses. Its shares have corrected from over $880 in January 2022 to $609.89 at the time of writing, but is there more room to go down?
- Actions: The US S&P500 is at all-time highs, reaching levels above its pre-pandemic prices, when there was already talk that there could be an overvaluation on the stock market. The Nikkei 225 is also at a high, which is at levels not seen since the early 1990s, with the bubble we’ve already talked about. The euro zone stock market (Eurostoxx50) and the Spanish stock market (Ibex35) are not exactly at record highs. In the case of Spain, the pre-pandemic levels have not even been reached. A separate question would be the stonks, those actions that in a forum decide to brutally raise their price, as recently happened with the actions of the GAME stores or the AMC cinema chain.
- Other collectibles: there are voices that affirm that we are in a bubble about certain collectible objects, such as rolex wristwatches either pokemon cards or the game Magic The Gathering, there is even talk of a bubble on the lego sets.
What if the bubble was…?
Money: With the pandemic, it is only necessary to see how the money supply has increased due to the policies of the central banks to mitigate the impact of the coronoavirus and the sanitary measures. The monetary aggregator M3 has been increased strongly by both the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve.
In other words, we cannot fail to consider the option that all assets are overvalued because more money has been introduced into the market, which is driving up the price of the value of the assets. It would be the money that has depreciated in its real value against the rest of the assets.