[ganonm]

Keep in mind that the present value depends somewhat on the discounted future earnings, which by definition extends to the end of time. That being said, the associated time discounting heavily reduces the impact of earnings envisaged say 100 years from now (a 5% discount rate would mean ~13k USD in 100 years is worth about 100 USD now, and that's probably generous given historic market returns).

So, the US doing extremely well 100 years from now vs. the US doing very badly 100 years from now could have a non-trivial impact on the perceived value of US assets. I suspect that the large uncertainty about what the world will look like in 100 years means there is just some sort of seldom changing value baked into assets to account for this, but it nonetheless exists, and could change if there was some huge geopolitical shift.

And before you mention anyone on earth would be dead in 150 years, yes that's true, however you can always sell it to someone later on who will be alive in 150 years (or sell it to someone who can later sell it to someone etc. etc.).

[mint2]

Is that actually how it works? Money has to go somewhere regardless of future. Whatever looks the least bad at present is in demand, regardless of what the returns are. Inflation was above tbill rates yet people bought because they don’t have better options.

It’s like food. Food in 100 years does not help the need for food now.

[kqr]

Food perishes faster han equity indices.

If there was a futures market in foodstuffs that basically keep forever and is cheap to store (honey?) you would see that the expected price of that food in 100 years would have some effect on the current price.

[nonethewiser]

In theory maybe, but I'm not sure this is right. The further out you go the more worthless expectations on returns become. Who actually has high confidence in a price model projecting 100 years out? What organization has the conviction to execute on this 100 year plan instead of signals with real correlation for returns over 1, 5, 10, 20 years?