After a crash, there should be bargains to be had for the brave. This is a perfectly logical argument that many accept. It may explain why the stocks that fell the most during last year's carnage have led the recovery since March.
However, even with the main indices still about a third lower than they were at the peak, it
is growing hard to make the argument that stocks are compellingly cheap.
Long-term valuation metrics such as cyclical price/earnings ratios – which compare prices with average earnings over the last 10 years, not just the last year – suggested that stocks were cheap, if not compellingly so, at the trough in early March.