XJO - Bear Posts only (Factors which might cause the markets to fall), page-11979

"The -7% contraction in earnings was predicted by FactSet and has since been revised up to -5.2%"

The Verdict

@kacyAs previously discussed, factset do a reasonable job of predicting earnings.
Their original call of a -7% contraction was made when only 51% of companies had reported.
The -5.2% revision was made when 81% of companies had reported.

The following data is based on the top 1200 US companies. (Russell 1000 + the next 200 if you like).
It represents well over 95% of total US stock market capitalisation.
In the US most companies report March, June, September, December.
I sizeable minority report April, July, October, January (but they include all the big retailers some important semi-conductor companies such as Nvidia).
A small minority report May, August, November, February.
My data is up to date, (end of July 2023), it includes most (but not all - some report this week) of the July reporters eg Walmart, Nvidia etc.

Had factset done their numbers now, the earnings contraction has narrowed further to -2.1%

In summary, these 1200 companies in aggregate

Beat QoQ, Q1-2023 earnings by +0.3%
Lost YoY, Q2-2022 earnings by -2.1%

Beat QoQ, Q1-2023 revenue by 2.5%
Beat YoY, Q2-2022 revenue by 0.5%





Clearly this reporting season was much better than expected, and consistent with other economic indicators suggesting that the US economy has been stronger than expected.