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Caps and crashes

THE MOTLEY FOOL
Ask the Fool

Published: November 18, 2021

Q: What's a company's "market cap"? -- T.W., Muskegon, Michigan
A: The term is short for market capitalization, which reflects the company's total value in the stock market. It's calculated by multiplying the total number of shares outstanding by the current share price.
Consider Apple, for example, which was recently trading around $150 per share. To find its total shares outstanding, you might check out its latest financial statement. Or check out websites such as Yahoo! Finance, which include shares outstanding among the company statistics they offer. Multiply Apple's recent share count of 16.5 billion by $150 and you'll arrive at its recent market cap -- about $2.5 trillion. That figure can give you a sense of whether the company is overvalued or undervalued, if you compare it to past levels or to peers.
Q: If I'd invested $1 in the stock market after the 1929 crash, what would I have today? -- F.E., Abilene, Texas
A: The crash of 1929 took place over many months and continued beyond 1929. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ("the Dow") peaked in early September 1929 at 381. It initially plunged in October, falling by 12.8% on Oct. 28 and then another 11.7% on Oct. 29, when it closed at 230. It rallied a bit but continued a long descent, falling to 41 in July 1932. At that point, it was down some 89% from its high. It took 25 years, from 1929 to 1954, for the Dow to hit its previous high of 381 again.
With the Dow recently around 35,800, it's up some 86,800% since that low of 41 -- enough to turn your $1 into $869, at an annual average growth rate of roughly 7.9%. And that doesn't even include dividends!
Fool's School
CEO Pay and Performance
It's not news that chief executive officers are generally highly paid. How highly paid? Well, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), "In 2020, a CEO at one of the top 350 firms in the U.S. was paid $24.2 million on average" -- that's up a whopping 18.9% over the previous year's level, due in large part to stock awards and stock options.
For perspective, it's helpful to compare CEOs' pay to that of their workers. Per the EPI, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 61-to-1 in 1989, surged to 307-to-1 in 2019, and then rose another 14% to 351-to-1 in 2020. Between 1978 and 2020, CEO compensation (including stock awards and options) surged 1,322%, while typical workers saw their pay grow by only 18%.
Those earning outsized pay, and those granting it, will argue that you have to pay for great performance. But there are studies showing that many companies are paying for underperformance. The research outfit MSCI, for example, studied CEO pay and company performance at 429 companies in the MSCI USA Index over the 10 years between 2006 and 2015; it found that "the bottom fifth of companies by equity incentive award outperformed the top fifth by nearly 39% on average on a 10-year cumulative basis."
Why are so many CEOs collecting so much in cash and stock while not delivering particularly strong company performance? Well, it's the board of directors that sets CEO pay, and CEOs are often in the room -- and even on the compensation committee! -- when they do so. CEOs can also influence who is nominated to be a board member, and as Warren Buffett has quipped, "When seeking directors, CEOs don't look for pit bulls. It's the cocker spaniel that gets taken home."
Shareholders do have a say: They can express any dissatisfaction by voting against proposed CEO compensation packages. (Such votes are currently nonbinding in the U.S., though that may change.)
My Dumbest Investment
Different Schools of Thought
My dumbest investment? I sold Shopify at $80 based on valuation concerns. -- M.A., online
The Fool responds: There are different schools of thought in the investing world, and your actions make perfect sense to one of them -- value investors -- who seek to buy into companies at prices below their fair value. Value investors can grow uneasy owning stocks when they appear to be very richly valued, as that suggests that they may soon fall in value.
The contrasting school of thought is that of growth investors, who focus less on a stock's valuation and more on its growth prospects. Growth investors are often willing to pay premium prices for high-performing companies, expecting them to grow into -- and exceed -- those values over time.
So while a value investor may never invest in a fast-growing stock such as Shopify, a growth investor would, perhaps pointing out that companies such as Amazon.com and Apple have often seemed overvalued and then have gone on to hit new highs repeatedly.
Shopify's stock has grown by more than 3,400% over the past five years, enough to turn a $10,000 investment into more than $350,000. The specialist in e-commerce software recently had a total market value of $183 billion, with many expecting it to be worth much more than that in the future. Others, though, wonder if the stock has gotten ahead of itself.
Foolish Trivia
Name That Company
I trace my roots back to 1873, when a used-book business was opened in Wheaton, Illinois. In 1932, I opened a retail store on Fifth Avenue in New York, which in 1974 was named "the world's largest bookstore" by the Guinness Book of World Records. I bought B. Dalton Bookseller in 1987, Doubleday Book Shops in 1990, and Borders and Waldenbooks in 2011. I launched my NOOK e-readers in 2009, and my NOOK store features more than 4.5 million digital books. I'm the world's largest retail bookseller, recently with 632 stores in 50 states. Who am I?
Last Week's Trivia Answer
I trace my roots back to San Francisco in 1853, during the Gold Rush, when a Bavarian immigrant opened a dry-goods store. Seeing that workers needed sturdier clothes, he worked with a tailor in the 1870s to develop "waist overalls" made from tough fabric with rivet reinforcements. Today, with a market value recently near $10 billion, I'm a global apparel giant, with brands such as Dockers, Denizen, Beyond Yoga and variants of my own name. I rake in about $4.5 billion annually. Since 1886, my logo has featured two horses trying to pull apart a pair of pants. Who am I? (Answer: Levi Strauss & Co.)
The Motley Fool Take
Commercial Real Estate Financing, Anyone?
Walker & Dunlop (NYSE: WD) is a small but impressive finance company that has been around since the 1930s and does all kinds of finance for commercial real estate. One of the biggest commercial real estate lenders in the country, it originates commercial mortgages with a specific concentration in multifamily properties (including apartment buildings and military and student housing). It's also the eighth largest commercial mortgage servicer in the United States, with a servicing portfolio of $107.2 billion as of the end of 2020.
Walker & Dunlop has experienced explosive growth since it went public in 2010. Over the past decade, its shares have soared by over 900%, averaging annual growth of more than 26%. In its last annual report, it posted 29% year-over-year growth in transaction volume, 33% growth in revenue and a 41% rise in diluted earnings per share. The company doubled its revenue over the past five years, and is looking to double it again in the coming five years.
Investors can expect continuing growth over the long term, as well as dividend income, with the company's payout recently yielding 1.55%. (The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Walker & Dunlop.)
COPYRIGHT 2021 THE MOTLEY FOOL, DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION, 1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106; 816-581-7500.


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