[shred]

Here ya go, direct from the horse's mouth:

http://www.spglobal.com/earnings.html


As you can see, many ways to distort the actual figure for
the S&P p/e.

My question is, since as of March 2002, when the market was at it's peak for the year, the S&P itself says "operating" p/e was 16 and "as reported" was 36, and since then, earnings have improved (albeit slightly) and the market has dived, shouldn't those ratios already be markedly lower for TTM figures as of July?

shred

[shred]

In other words, since the S&P was at 1100 + in March and the "higher" way of calculating P/E was at 36, and it now stands at less than 850, a decline of almost 25%, shouldn't the current "as reported" P/E be about 27? And "operating earnings" p/e is now roughly 17.25.

I think BigCharts and the gold website are going by the older March numbers.

The more up to date numbers one can argue are still overvalued, but with interest rates at 40 year lows, a case can also be made that the market is fairly valued in here and may indeed be getting cheap.

[Soren]

I think "as reported" means GAAP and "operating" basically means pro forma. In the past, I might not have had a problem with excluding certain one time charges from earnings, but is has been abused more recently to pad earnings. That is a huge difference between the two. Tells you something about the magnitude of the accounting shenanigans going on.

The change in S&P from March is only half the equation. If earnings also fell, then the S&P P/E might not necessarily delcine.