Stocks Selling at a Discount to Book Value is a Thing of the Past

We suspect pegging short-term interest rates at zero for years has something to do with the fact that, for as far back as we have data, there have never been fewer stocks selling at a discount to book value. Importantly, this is a global phenomenon. There is nowhere in the world (except perhaps MSCI China, which is riddled with state-owned banks and property stocks with questionable balance sheets) where an investor can go to find an abundance of stocks selling on the cheap - not in Europe, not in Japan and not in EMs generally.