Professor Aswath Damodaran (New York University Stern School of Business) has so far posted a series of five data updates on his blog, “Musings on Markets.” His first post includes an examination of the equity risk premium (ERP), and the others include data related to bond markets, “playing the numbers game,” insights into risk, hurdle rates, and funding costs. The ERP is a favorite topic of the professor, and he does not use static historical data in estimating ERP because he says you’ll get some very strange-looking numbers. Instead, he uses a forward-looking method he calls the “implied” ERP, which he says is “an estimate of the price that investors are demanding for the risk of investing in equities. I back this number out from the current market prices and expected future cash flows, an IRR for equities that is analogous to the yield to maturity on a bond.” He computed the ERP at the start of 2019 to be 5.96%, up from 5.08% on Jan. 1, 2018.