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Markets sit at elevated levels, fuelled by optimism around artificial intelligence and the promise of lasting productivity gains. Yet beneath the excitement lies a complex mix of valuations, momentum, and risk – raising important questions about how investors can stay positioned if sentiment shifts.

Markets are expensive – observations and implications

There is a conga line of analysts, fund managers and commentators pointing out the extremes many traditional or conventional measures of value have now reached.  From price-to-earnings, price-to-book, and market-cap-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to earnings and dividend yields, the U.S. S&P 500 is in rarified air when it comes to the price investors are willing to pay for exposure to future growth. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Aura Group, Digital Asset Funds Management, Market commentary, Market Valuation.

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While bubble definitions abound, most fall into two camps: those that measure overvaluation and those that observe the behaviours and conditions that typically give rise to it.

The most straightforward definition of a bubble is asset prices climbing far above some measure of value, such as earnings, dividends, gross-value-added (GVA) or discounted cash flows. Robert Shiller’s famous CAPE ratio, which compares stock prices to long-term average earnings, and John Hussman’s market-cap-to-GVA, were designed to flag these distortions. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Global markets, Insightful Insights, Investing Education, Market commentary.

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This week, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) lifted the lid on the internal financial projections of OpenAI and Anthropic – the companies at the centre of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. 

By way of background, Dario Amodei, once a senior leader at OpenAI, parted ways with Sam Altman in 2021 amid strategic and perhaps personal differences and launched Anthropic that same year, seeded it with a $124 million Series A. The debut of ChatGPT in late 2022 blindsided the Amodei and handed OpenAI 100 million users overnight, along with an 18-month revenue lead. Anthropic pivoted sharply to enterprise-grade deployments of its Claude models, a bet that has now propelled its private-market valuation to $183 billion – still trailing OpenAI’s $500 billion mark, but closing the gap through disciplined business to business (B2B) focus. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Companies, Market commentary.

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In recessions, it is said, ‘cash is king’. We mustn’t be in a recession because the price of gold has trounced cash. 

In the last 10 U.S. trading sessions, six all-time highs have been registered in the gold price. And gold isn’t the only precious metal receiving a bid. Seven all-time highs have been registered in silver, six all-time highs in palladium, and three in platinum. As an aside, there have also been five new all-time highs in the S&P500 and one in Bitcoin. All have been on significant volume.

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by Roger Montgomery Posted in Investing Education, Market commentary.

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Anecdotal evidence. Dismissed as mostly irrelevant, anecdotal evidence becomes useful often only in hindsight. Until then, it’s a novelty, statistically unsound, unreliable, lacking objectivity and unverifiable.

But boy, it’s fun to inquire.

That was then

In the 1920s, the stock market was ‘roaring’, enjoying widespread optimism and even euphoria amid new innovations. On October 15, 1929, after the market had experienced a nine-year rise, the first celebrity Yale economist, Irving Fisher, gave a speech in New York City. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Global markets, Market commentary.

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Wall Street’s S&P 500 dropped more than one per cent last week, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell three per cent. It’s really nothing in the scheme of things. That’s because the Nasdaq 100 is up more than 130 per cent in three years, and the S&P 500 is more than eighty-five per cent higher since October 2022. Nevertheless, last week’s turn-down was the worst week for the Nasdaq in seven months. What the index price declines perhaps don’t reflect, however, is a much sharper shift in the market’s risk appetite. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary.

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Not only are stock market valuations stretched, but on the metrics that are most reliable for predicting future returns, the U.S. market is at an all-time high. We can say that factually and therefore categorically.  It’s not a matter of opinion. 

It’s worth remembering to bring everything back to the data to avoid the influence of emotions. 

The important question then is not whether reducing your exposure and rebalancing portfolios results in a missed opportunity to maximise gains, but whether you’ll regret not doing that, and instead of retiring in two years, being forced to work for another six or seven. Indeed, and upon reflection, there will always be regret; the decision is about which regret is worse. Letting gains evaporate might be worse than missing out on a few more dollars.

This article was first published in The Australian on 05 November 2025. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Aura Group, Digital Asset Funds Management, Global markets, In the Press, Market commentary.

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Over the last month, the U.S. stock market has shown signs of shifting priorities. That’s because, surprisingly, the top-performing sectors weren’t the usual suspects. They weren’t the high-flying artificial intelligence (AI), technology, or defence industries, but the more stable and defensive healthcare, utilities, and gold sectors. These sectors, seen as safe havens, suggest that at least some investors are bracing for turbulence.

It certainly raises the question: Are cracks forming in this bull market? Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary.

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I joined Sean Aylmer on Fear + Greed yesterday to discuss Myer’s disappointing announcement of a 30 per cent decline in profit, which was followed by a 25 per cent drop in its share price.

So, what went wrong?

As a traditional bricks-and-mortar department store, Myer has been grappling with significant challenges. Its move into the highly competitive online retail space has brought debt and complex integration issues, while also placing it in direct competition with pure-play online retailers. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Companies, Market commentary, Podcast Channel.

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In U.S. trading overnight, Nvidia achieved a market capitalisation of US$5 trillion, after which Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Google’s parent company Alphabet delivered their September quarter earnings.

The results were impressive, as expected. Microsoft reported Q1 revenue of US$77.67 billion, beating estimates of US$75.33 billion, with earnings per share (EPS) of US$4.13, surpassing the US$3.67 forecast. Continue…

by Roger Montgomery Posted in Market commentary.

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