With more than 25 per cent of S&P 500 companies having reported their first-quarter results, 80 per cent have exceeded analysts’ consensus profit estimates – a record pace, and well above the historical average of 62 per cent.
….The record “beat rate,” as earnings trackers call it, can’t gloss over the fact that earnings forecasts have been in decline for months – leaving expectations so low that topping them is a dubious achievement……..Major earnings-tracking services such as Factset, Thomson Reuters Research and S&P Capital IQ expect S&P 500 year-over-year earnings growth of between 4 and 4.5 per cent for the quarter ended March 31. That would be the weakest profit growth in more than two years.
via An earnings season only a pessimist could love – The Globe and Mail.
Once again we see the commentariat and the companies who create the news and shape apparent trends leading the pack to extinction. No doubt these parasites get set with their positions in the market before the comments are released onto the electronic media. It reinforces the view that price action on a borad scale is the only true fact when it comes to construction of a basic strategy.
Mass manipulation at its best.