Unexpectedly Intriguing!
02 June 2020

Every three months, we take a snapshot of the expectations for future earnings in the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) at approximately the midpoint of the current quarter, shortly after most U.S. firms have announced their previous quarter's earnings.

The earnings outlook for the S&P 500 has dramatically decayed since our Winter 2020 snapshot, based on the data available as of 21 May 2020, trailing year earnings for all quarters in 2020 have plummeted from their previous projections just before the onset of the Coronavirus Recession.

Forecasts for S&P 500 Trailing Twelve Month Earnings per Share, September 2014-December 2021, Snapshot on 21 May 2020

We had been planning to reset the horizontal axis in the chart to start with December 2016 with this snapshot, but we left the earliest period in the chart at September 2014 so we could compare the magnitude of the previous major earnings recession with the Coronavirus Earnings Recession, which is already projected to be far deeper. Since we were occupied covering other breaking stories, we're also a bit late in presenting the Spring 2020 snapshot of expected future S&P 500 earnings, where the outlook has continued to decay further than what we've shown in the chart.

As the chart stands with the data that was available as of 21 May 2020, the Coronavirus Recession has monkeyhammered S&P 500's projected earnings through 2020. On 14 February 2020, S&P was projecting trailing year earnings of $161.22 per share for the S&P 500. On 21 May 2020, that projection has plummeted by nearly 42% to $93.88 per share.

Or if you pull the latest data through the end of May 2020, projected S&P 500 trailing year earnings have since fallen to $90.33 per share, or by nearly 44% from what S&P was projecting for 2020-Q4's trailing year earnings per share nearly three and a half months ago.

Data Source

Silverblatt, Howard. Standard & Poor. S&P 500 Earnings and Estimates. [Excel Spreadsheet]. 21 May 2020. Accessed 22 May 2020.

Labels: , , ,

About Political Calculations

Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:

ironman at politicalcalculations

Thanks in advance!

Recent Posts

Indices, Futures, and Bonds

Closing values for previous trading day.

Most Popular Posts
Quick Index

Site Data

This site is primarily powered by:

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

CSS Validation

Valid CSS!

RSS Site Feed

AddThis Feed Button

JavaScript

The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.

Other Cool Resources

Blog Roll

Market Links

Useful Election Data
Charities We Support
Shopping Guides
Recommended Reading
Recently Shopped

Seeking Alpha Certified

Archives