Do stock prices follow interest rates or inflation?
Author InfoJohn E. Golob David G. Bishop Abstract Market analysts often forecast changes in stock prices by comparing earnings-price ratios on stocks to nominal interest rates. This paper shows that stock prices have followed inflation more closely than interest rates over the last thirty years. This result has implications for recent stock valuations, because the spread between nominal interest rates and inflation has recently been above historic averages. That is, stock prices appear more overvalued when the earnings-price ratio is compared to nominal interest rates than when the earnings-price ratio is compared to inflation. Our result also helps explain the behavior of stock prices during the 1970s. Download InfoTo download: If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not
