Jeremy Siegel
“We are lucky enough to hear from two important luminaries if I dare not say lions, of the financial economic world over the last few decades,” introduced Gillian Tett as Robert Shiller and Jeremy Siegel squared off again.
Perhaps one reason panglossian market conditions can persist in the age of Twitter and Instagram is that omnipresent social media allow us to edit out anything that vaguely threatens our preferred mindset about stocks.
Most studies of the impact of family ownership indicate that, on balance, family control is a good thing for stockholders. Family-controlled firms typically maintain a long-term perspective and strong balance sheets, and boast corporate cultures that have won the admiration of Warren Buffett. Credit Suisse has added to the body of research on family-controlled firms with the recent release of The Family Business Model, a global study which sought to better understand why family-run businesses outperform.
Since bottoming in 2009, corporate profits as a percentage of GDP have rebounded sharply and currently stand at about 11%, or approximately 70% above the long-term average. Warren Buffett once said, “You have to be wildly optimistic to believe that corporate profits as a percent of GDP can, for any sustained period, hold much above 6%.” And Jeremy Grantham has called profits margins “the most mean-reverting series in finance.”