The market’s not exactly on sale
The Crestmont P/E for July came in at 43.8, which is 184% above its arithmetic mean and 212% above its geometric mean. In plain English: U.S. stocks are priced like everyone collectively decided risk is a suggestion.
Why investors should care
This isn’t a company-specific story, so there’s no single ticker to watch — but it absolutely matters if you own basically anything tied to the S&P 500. When valuations are this stretched, the market tends to get a little less forgiving. Good news still helps, but great expectations can turn into a very expensive game of “beat and raise.”
Historical context, with a side of eyebrow raise
The metric’s all-time high was 44.4 in December 2025, so we’re still hanging around the ceiling rather than wandering in the bargain bin. The reading also sits in the 100th percentile of a 14-plus-decade series, which is market-speak for: we’ve been here before, but not often.
Big picture
A sky-high valuation doesn’t mean stocks have to fall tomorrow. It does mean the bar is high, the cushion is thin, and investors may want to pay extra attention to earnings quality, margins, and whether the economy can keep the party going.