Ben Carlson

The minimums are effectively eliminated.

You used to have to go down to a brick and mortar place and fill out some paperwork and write a check and wait a few days and then invest, and usually invest it based on whatever that broker told you to invest in.

Now you can, on your smartphone, open an account, hook up your bank account, put some money in, invest within minutes.

And so I think for young people, breaking down those barriers to entry has been great.

And then you have this automatic investing revolution of money constantly going in, in 401ks, in brokerage accounts, in IRAs.

Having a consistent buyer of stocks, that has to change the shape of valuations as well.

And that's something that's happened over the past 40 years or so.

And I think even in the past 10 years, the reduction in costs and the ease of access to the market have to change the valuations.

That's why I think trying to time these things, this is a long-winded answer to explain your question, trying to time these things on valuations is very, because you have people who pick a line in the sand and go, all right,

I'll buy when it gets back to the historical average of 16 times earnings or whatever.

And then you realize, okay, that happened once in 2009 for like six months.

And then it hasn't happened again since.

Again, because that average is slowly but surely moving up.

So I think trying to time based on valuations, it sounds really intelligent.

Geez, stocks feel really expensive here.

I'm going to sell.

You could have made that same argument for the past 10 years every year.

So I do think that trying to do that, you can use valuations to set expectations, I think.

I think that's perfectly reasonable.

You know, valuations are way higher, as they should be, because we've been in a long bull market.