by Jesse Felder
David Stockman’s Contra Corner
Over the past few years I’ve written a fair amount about the record-high levels of corporate profit margins. I’ve been focused on this topic because corporate earnings are one of the most popular ways to value equities thus the sustainability of record-high profit margins should be an issue of great concern to investors. If profit margins revert to historical averages, earnings-based valuation measures investors are using to justify investment in equities today could quickly go against them making stocks appear much more expensive than they do currently. And this process may now be underway.