On Feb 1, 12:02*am, beliav...[at]aol.com wrote:
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Forward estimates of earnings can be found within the price. If prices
are low, it means investors expect earnings will be low in the future.
The PE ratio is not a very useful accounting ratio unless you assume
that earning is constant.

beliavsky[at]aol.com wrote:
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Instead of looking up data for the ETF, look up data for the underlying
index. Same goes for yields which are often missing or reported
incorrectly on sources like Yahoo Finance. You need to adjust
accordingly for ETF expenses, etc., but on something like a P/E on a
major index that would be a minor factor.

-Tad

beliavsky[at]aol.com writes:

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Morningstar has them. It doesn't seem to allow the ETF
screening tool to filter on that, but when you look at
the page of information about any particular ETF, they
have a "Price/Prospective Earnings" ratio.

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<beliavsky[at]aol.com> wrote in message
news:caea5920-b0e6-4e2e-b7f3-901266da6994[at]r28g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
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http://us.ishares.com/product_info/f...erview/ITF.htm
The iShares site puts the p/e at 13.49

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/por...0,0,0,0,0.html
S&P puts the p/e at 10.98 current and 13.71 projected 1 year.

On Jan 31, 7:31*pm, Douglas Johnson <p...[at]classtech.com> wrote:

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Use the P/B ratio. There are at least four problems with P/B.

The rating services use book value that includes goodwill and
intangibles instead of tangible book value.

Book value doesn't change quickly so problems don't surface quickly
compared to monitoring earnings or sales.

The rating services don't graph book value, making it difficult to see
if management is diluting the value of the stock either through stock
buy backs, stock options to employees, or acquiring other firms at a
big premium to book value.

Growing firms can take advantage of accelerated depreciation
artificially depressing book value.

--
Ron

beliavsky[at]aol.com wrote:

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I tend to be suspicious of forward estimates at the best of times. They mostly
amount to extending the current trend line out into next year, biased by the
analyst's optimism or pessimism. In times like these, they are pure fantasy.

Have you been reading earnings reports? Many companies have stopped offering
guidance for next quarter, must less the year.

Of course, trailing P/Es can't tell you much right now, either. So what's a boy
to do?

-- Doug

<beliavsky[at]aol.com> wrote in message
news:caea5920-b0e6-4e2e-b7f3-901266da6994[at]r28g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Be very wary of using the data at Yahoo Finance as they have numerous
errors.

The IShares website shows the P/E for ITF to be 13.49 as of 12/31/2008.

On Jan 31, 7:02*am, beliav...[at]aol.com wrote:
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Stock prices aren't rational.

- quote -

http://steventowns.com/2008/10/26/ni...-then-and-now/ shows
that TOPIX has forward estimates.

--
Ron

One can search for ETFs whose stocks have price earnings ratios at

http://finance.yahoo.com/etf/browser...cs=1&ce=20&o=a

but some of the P/E's look anomalously low, for example a P/E of 2.77
for the iShares S&P/TOPIX 150 Index (symbol ITF). I think the "E" is
computed using trailing earnings, not estimates of future earnings, so
it could be that the ETFs with very low reported P/E's have companies
where earnings are expected to plummet. Or is there some other quirk?

It would be nice to a have a source of P/E ratios for ETFs that use
forward estimates. Does anyone know of one?

On Yahoo one can see the holdings of an ETF and also find forward
earning estimates of individual companies, so one can compute a
forward earnings estimate by hand for some ETFs.