Note to bulls: Stock-market valuations haven’t improved over the last 2 years

If the stock market is to break out to record highs, as some exuberant bulls are predicting, then it will have to look elsewhere than valuations for support.

That’s because the S&P 500 SPX now is almost as overvalued today as it was at the bull market’s January 2022 high, despite last year’s bear market. This is both unusual and disappointing, since the typical pattern is for a bear market to largely work off the previous bull market’s excesses—thereby creating the preconditions for a major new bull leg.

This…