Forecasting long-term stock returns: the two-hour recipe (II)

Last week I started writing up a quick (?) methodology to forecast equity returns. Specifically, the question was

Forecast the real total return of U.S. equities over the next ten years. Show your work. Time: two hours.

I wrote down a decomposition of the total return into three components:

$$\frac{R_{t,t+k}}{(1+\widehat{\pi}_{t+1, t+k})^k} = \frac{V_{t+k}}{V_{t}} \frac{(1+g_F)^k} {(1+\widehat{\pi}_{t+1, t+k})^k} (1+\widehat{dy}_{t+1, t+k})^k$$

The three components are:

1) Income, which boils down to the geometric average of the dividend yield:
$$(1+\widehat{dy}_{t+1, t+k})^k$$
2) The 10-year change of a valuation ratio.
$$\frac{V_{t+k}}{V_{t}}$$
3) The real growth of the fundamental used in the construction of the valuation ratio.
$$\frac{(1+g_F)^k} {(1+\widehat{\pi}_{t+1, t+k})^k}$$
Since this is meant to be a quick estimation, I decided that I would use either the historical average or the ten-year rolling average of the relevant data to forecast each of the three components.

Pulling the Shiller long-term data set (xls) on stock prices, earnings, and dividends, I took the geometric average of the dividend yield between 2005 and 2014 as my forecast for the dividend yield over the next ten years: 2.0082%. So my forecast for \(\widehat{dy}_{t+1, t+10}\) is 0.02.

For the valuation ratio, we can calculate two from the Shiller dataset. The first one is the CAPE ("cyclically-adjusted" P/E ratio, or "Shiller's P/E"). A casual observation of the time series chart since 1880 suggests that the CAPE either experienced a shift sometime after the 1980s, or is experiencing upward drift. Today's CAPE (27.9) is significantly higher than the historical average (16.6) or the ten-year rolling average (22.6). We'll take those two values as alternative forecasts of the CAPE ten years from now. The historical CAPE implies that the ratio of valuation metrics, \(V_{t+k} / V_{t}\), is 0.595 (16.6 / 27.9). The ten-year rolling average CAPE implies a ratio of 0.81 (22.6 / 27.9).

The second valuation ratio we can compute from the Shiller dataset is the dividend yield (or rather, to fit the total return formula above, the price-to-dividend ratio):

Just like the CAPE, the price/dividend ratio seems to have experience either a shift or drift some time after the 1980s. Today's multiple (55.8) is close to the 10-year rolling average, but much higher than the historical average (27.9). As with the CAPE, we'll consider both to forecast the 10-year-ahead price/dividend ratio. Using the historical P/D, the ratio of valuation metrics, \(V_{t+k} / V_{t}\), is  0.50 (27.9 / 55.8), whereas using the 10-year rolling average, the ratio is  0.93 (51.9 / 55.8).

Growth of the fundamental

The third component of the total return is the real growth rate of the fundamental:
$$\frac{(1+g_F)^k} {(1+\widehat{\pi}_{t+1, t+k})^k}$$
Which fundamental we use is determined by the valuation ratio we pick. For the CAPE, the fundamental is the 10-year rolling average of earnings. For the price-dividend ratio, the fundamental is dividends.

The real growth rate of (the 10y average) of earnings has been 1.66% per annum. The rolling 10-year counterpart fluctuates quite a bit (even though this is the rolling average growth rate of a rolling average of earnings), and is now at 3.5%.

For real dividends, the historical (10-year rolling average) growth rate is 1.34% (5.1%).

Putting everything together

I have proposed two forecasts for each of two possible valuation ratios and their corresponding fundamentals, for a total of four forecasts (the income component is the same for all four).  The following table combines the forecast components of real returns to produce the total return forecast:

	\(V_{t+k} / V_{t}\)	\(g_F\)	\((1+g_F)^k / (1+\pi)^k\)	\(dy\)	\((1+dy)^k\)	\(R_{t,t+10} / (1+\pi)^k\)	Annual real return
CAPE (historical avg.)	0.595	0.0166	1.179	0.02	1.219	0.855	-1.55%
CAPE (10y rolling avg.)	0.81	0.035	1.411	0.02	1.219	1.393	3.37%
Dividend yield (historical avg.)	0.50	0.0134	1.142	0.02	1.219	0.696	-3.56%
Dividend yield (10y rolling avg.)	0.93	0.051	1.644	0.02	1.219	1.864	6.43%

The last column shows that the forecast real return, per year, varies from -3.6% to 6.4%.