Here are some things we know. We know that long-term stock market returns are utterly unrelated to economic growth. Instead, they are related to the price at which you buy your stake. Buy when it is cheap and history tells us you will make good long-term returns. Buy when it is expensive and history tells us you won’t.
We also know that when a market is cheap, sentiment will be such that everyone will have a reason why it will stay cheap forever and must be avoided at all cost. The clever investor is the one who ignores the noise and sees the price.
This brings me to China. People keep telling me how cheap it is. Brian Dennehy of Fundexpert.co.uk sent me a chart this week showing how major markets have performed since October 2007. The S&P 500 is down 10 per cent and the FTSE 100 is down about 11 per cent. But the Shanghai Composite index? Down a nasty 62 per cent. China doesn’t look that good over a 20-year period either. The MSCI China Index started at 100 on December 31 1992. It is now at 59.