Will earnings ride to the rescue?
Main U.S. indexes gain, but off highs; Nasdaq now up ~0.9%
Energy leads S&P 500 sector gainers; Healthcare sole loser
Euro STOXX 600 index up ~1.6%
Dollar, gold up; crude up ~3%; bitcoin down >1%
U.S. 10-Year Treasury yield rises to ~3.94%
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WILL EARNINGS RIDE TO THE RESCUE?
The S&P 500 index sold off 8.5% from its July 16 record closing high into its August 5 finish.
For those expecting earnings to potentially drive a recovery, Mike O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, is not so optimistic.
As O'Rourke sees it, earnings season has "underwhelmed" and the Magnificent Seven have failed to ride to the rescue.
Using data from Standard & Poor's, O'Rourke says that when earnings season started, the S&P 500 Q2 year-over-year earnings growth was forecasted to be 5.7%, and 6.2% sequentially.
With approximately 60% of companies having reported, he says the year-over-year growth was 2.9%, and sequential growth was 3.2%.
"The real kicker here is not Q2 softness, it is the back half of the year. As first half earnings grow low single digits, the forecast for second half earnings growth is 18%. It should be clear those estimates are not in the realm of reality, especially with a slowing economy," writes O'Rourke in a note.
If earnings growth continues at the current first half pace, O'Rourke says that 2024 earnings growth will be approximately 4%. However, he believes that an equity market trading 23x to 25x earnings "needs to do better than that," while he notes that there's a lot of hope banking on Nvidia's report coming later this month.
O'Rourke's bottom line is that an equity market that was pricing in a "Nirvana Goldilocks scenario" accompanied by Fed easing "needs to reset."
This leads him to say that "As of today, the S&P 500 is trading 24.7x trailing earnings. As we indicated earlier, the forward estimates can't be trusted. Thus, even a 20% correction from here leaves the index in historically expensive territory. The downside risk becomes greater if a recession does emerge."
(Terence Gabriel)
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