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Lower interest rates must also be a factor in higher margins. And we haven't really seen the full impact of reversion of interest rates to more normal (if still quite low) levels because most companies were smart enough to pile on low cost long term debt during the pandemic before the rate hiking cycle began. Financial engineering has also been a factor in stock returns exceeding earnings returns as companies were able to borrow cheaply to fund stock buybacks and a shrinking share count supports higher prices and provides a constant bid for the underlying shares. And something else that has been helping margins is that companies have been able to use inflation as an excuse to increase prices by 50% from pre-pandemic levels and even though their input costs have now come down and they've been able to make cost savings by cutting staff numbers and limiting wage increases to well below the rate of inflation these haven't been passed on to consumers. A reflection of how concentrated most markets are these days. And of course there are composition changes. You'd expect S&P margins to be higher when tech has gone from 10-15% to 30-35% of the index and in this cycle there has also been a shift in investor preferences away from low margin value stocks and cyclicals and towards high margin if low growth consumer defensives.