No. of Recommendations: 8
PS: Maybe Jim can check my math.
Well, I'm too lazy to check your math, but that's precisely how I usually do it when I don't go back to build an all new trend line from scratch, except for the dividend part. All of my calculations, including the value growth rate, are price only--it's only at the last step when thinking about likely forward returns that I add an estimate for the yield, which is historically close to 0.5%. So I would normally stop at your figure of $101.80 as a valuation exercise. That doesn't get increased by an estimate of dividends since the baseline figure.
This is probably one of those situations that "approximately right" is good enough. The valuation level is meaningfully above average. Not quite at eye watering 1999 level, but likely by enough that a flat couple of years would not be unexpected for a long term holder.
I really want to go back to the underlying data again to revise the trend line, just ... stuff.
We kind of know what it would say. Profitability has been extreme lately, which would probably make the trend line higher and QQQE seem less overvalued. But I believe the recent upswing in profitability, though large, is probably in large part just cyclical. A good time to update the trend line would be at least part way through the next earnings recession, so the additional data includes both the unusually good recent years and at least a bit of unusually bad.
Jim