MiB: The Jeremies! Schwartz and Siegel on SFTLR!

This week, we speak with The Jeremies! Professor Jeremy Siegel at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is frequently voted Best professor at Wharton, and is the author of Stocks for the Long Run, Jeremy Schwartz is CIO at Wisdom Tree Asset Management, where he has worked since May 2005.

We discuss how why stocks — and real estate, gold, and bonds — have performed over time. Among all asset classes, stocks have performed best over the past two centuries — over 6% in real (after inflation) terms. Real estate has barely outperformed inflation, and bonds have failed to keep up with rising prices.

He explains the cycle of speculative excesses — when investors get over-enthusiastic about stocks, making their prices excessive, until the bust comes along, making them very attractively priced. This is why they have a preference for indexing, based on fundamentals, not market cap.

Siegel had warned in mid-2020 of coming inflation due to fiscal and monetary stimulus, now believes that inflation has peaked and that the FOMC is over-tightening. He urges the Fed to stop raising rates sooner than later.

A list of his favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here this week.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including the podcast extras on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with financial historian Edward Chancellor. He is currently a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews and an occasional contributor to the Wall Street Journal and MoneyWeek. In 2008, he received the George Polk Award for financial reporting. Chancellor is the author of “Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation.” His new book “The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest” is a nominee for FT’s 2022 Business Book of the Year.