On 21 August 2017, with the S&P 500 at 2,428, I wrote a MarketWatch column that pushed back against gloom-and-doom pundits who were predicting an impending market crash. I argued that such dire warnings completely ignored the significance of low interest rates. At the time, the 10-year Treasury yielded 2.18%, so that the real, inflation-adjusted rate was near zero, compared to a 3.3% real earnings yield on stocks.

My conclusion was that: “Nobody knows whether stock prices will be higher or lower tomorrow, or next week, or next year. But for value investors who don’t try to predict short-term price fluctuations, stocks are attractively priced relative to bonds.”