Stocks are overvalued, and US stocks are particularly overvalued. Their prices are unusually high in comparison to sales, earnings, the value of their asset books, and relative to gross domestic product (that last is Warren Buffett’s favourite measure).

So you shouldn’t buy them. That’s hard to argue with. And it is why strategy group GMO’s latest estimate of the probable seven-year returns from stocks is profoundly gloomy: they reckon you will see a negative 3.8 per cent return from large US stocks and a negative 1 per cent return from small US stocks.

Go global and you might see a small positive return. But GMO predicts that you would have to put much of your money into risky emerging market value stocks if you want to see anything that comes close to the long-term average real return from US stocks of 6.5 per cent.