Dow Jones Industrial Average fans might not like the reminder that US blue-chip shares don’t come cheap. Even with both markets climbing towards fresh highs, the FTSE 100 Index still looks cheaper on earnings, and more generous on income.
On 18 February, the Footsie rose 1.2% to end the day at 10,686 while the Dow also gained 0.3% to sit at 49,662. We can see the recent strong gains in both the iShares Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (LSE: CIND) and iShares FTSE 100 UCITS ETF (LSE: ISF).
With both indexes rising, it’s tempting to compare them on a head-to-head basis. But I find looking just at the level of an index can be a distraction. The useful question is what investors are paying for earnings, and what they’re getting back in cash in both markets.
On paper, there are big ticks for the Footsie over its US index counterpart. The Dow has a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of around 25 compared to the Footsie’s 19.5 as I write on 19 February.
That implies the Footsie trades at roughly a 20% discount on trailing earnings, and it’s a similar story on the income side.
The Footsie’s current dividend yield of 2.8% is comfortably ahead of the Dow’s, which tends to sit below 2%.
It’s worth noting that a higher yield doesn’t make one index necessarily better than the other. However, it often suggests a bigger slice of expected returns comes through cash payouts, not rapid earnings growth.
I think most of the valuation gap can be explained by the make up of each index.
The Footsie leans towards banks, energy, miners, and big, steady multinational companies in healthcare and consumer staples. Those areas can churn out cash and pay chunky dividends, but they’re not usually priced like high-growth stocks.
The Dow, meanwhile, is more of a ‘best of America’ shortlist. It blends big tech, including Microsoft, and healthcare with industrial heavyweights, consumer brands, and financials like Goldman Sachs. So the flavour is different. There’s more of the US growth story in the mix, even if it isn’t just a tech index.
It’s also worth separating the Dow from the wider US headlines. A lot of the excitement has been driven by the tech-focused ‘Magnificent 7’. That can pull valuations higher across the market, even when plenty of other US shares are just ticking along.
Finally, US companies have tended to return cash in a different way to their UK counterparts. Buybacks have often played a bigger role than dividends, which is one reason US indexes can look less generous on yield than the Footsie.