This data comes from Federal Reserve flow of funds tables F102 and L102 on Non-farm, non-financial corporate business as of Q3 2006. I’ll e-mail you my spreadsheet.

(Readers can copy and paste series from the Fed flow of funds tables onto Excel spreadsheets by going to the ’screen reader’ section of the Fed Z.1 release web site: F102 and L102.)

Because the data comes from flow of funds tables, the numbers are different from actual accounting figures. In the case of buybacks, the data comes from line 38 of table F102 (Net new equity issues), which means that (since the figure is not broken down between new issues and buybacks) the number used to represent buybacks is actually understated.

Price-earnings and yield ratios are calculated with reference to line 42 in table L102 (Market value of equities).

After-tax profits are calculated by subtraction line 2 (taxes on corporate income) from line 1 (profits before tax - book) in table F102.

The quarterly figures are annualized estimates made by the Federal Reserve.

I understand that the Fed data for market value of equities refers to the end of the period, rather than average values over the period.

Because Fed data understates the volume of buybacks (by not breaking out new issues), I would say that actual PATAB is likely to be less than shown above.

Enjoyed your article “U.S. Equities: Wildly Overpriced or a Great Bargain?”

2 questions. 1) Do you have a spreadsheet with the data you used? 2) Did you use end of period (post buyback) shares in calculating the Price/PATAB rather than average outstanding shares?