In preparing the latest update to Political Calculations' signature tool The S&P 500 at Your Fingertips to incorporate the latest price, earnings, dividend and inflation data through October 2007, we noticed that Standard & Poor has now revised the reported earnings (via this Excel spreadsheet) for the S&P 500 in September 2007 significantly downward.
As recently as last month, S&P had put the trailing one year earnings per share for the index at $86.03, an increase of $1.11 over the previous quarter's $84.92 per share. That older figure remains unchanged, however the S&P 500's reported one-year trailing earnings per share has now been set to be 79.16 for the quarter ending in September 2007, with the S&P 500's trailing one-year earnings per share now having decreased by $5.76, a 6.8% decrease from the quarter ending in June 2007.
Going by the spreadsheet linked above, Standard & Poor is now anticipating that the S&P 500's earnings per share will continue to decrease through December 2007, then begin increasing with each quarter in 2008. The trailing one-year earnings per share anticipated in December 2007 is $78.92.
Meanwhile, Standard & Poor has also revised the reported 12-month dividends per share for the S&P 500 for September 2007, with this figure now coming in at $26.97 per share instead of the previously reported $27.06 per share, a nine cent per share decrease. Unlike the revised earnings per share, this is still an 80 cent increase over the trailing one-year dividends per share recorded in the previous quarter ($26.17). At present, S&P anticipates the S&P 500's dividends per share for 2007 will come in at $27.85, just one cent below where they had previously forecast it to be as recently as last month.
In any case, here is our regularly updated table showing the S&P 500's performance in the year-to-date, year-over-year, and since January 1871:
| Selected S&P 500 Performance Data Through October 2007 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Annualized Rates | Nominal Rate of Return (%) | Rate of Inflation (%) | Real Rate of Return (%) |
| Since January 1871 | 9.19 | 2.08 | 7.11 |
| Year over Year | 14.95 | 3.54 | 11.41 |
| Year to Date | 12.94 | 4.32 | 8.62 |
Since we're breaking bad news today, which will have the recession hounds flooding and linking this post to gawk at the earnings carnage, we're going to save our historic S&P 500 chart that we had prepared for another day. That's a shame, because it's maybe one of the most remarkable stock market-related charts we've ever seen - and has led to analysis that has nearly completely changed how we view the market. Ah well, maybe in December....
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Closing values for previous trading day.
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