Corporate America’s price targets and profit estimates are getting slashed all over Wall Street
Analysts are increasingly souring on how much money S&P 500 companies will make and how high their stock prices will go.
Strategists at Bloomberg Intelligence track the number of increases versus decreases to 12-month forward earnings-per-share estimates and price cuts from analysts who cover stocks in the S&P 500. Both those metrics are falling off a cliff to hit their lowest levels in at least two years for the week ending April 11:
Some of the cracks in these measures predate any semblance of clarity around tariffs, which suggests that either analysts were ahead of the curve in expecting damage to operating performance (less likely) or they were already responding to early indications of a softening in economic activity.
Unsurprisingly, negative earnings revisions are most pervasive in the consumer discretionary sector, which faces a stiff headwind from tariffs due to its exposure to China.
Given that tariffs tend to push consumer prices higher, it’s no surprise that sales revisions are holding up better than their top-line counterparts. But those are still deep in the red at -0.28.
However, even as they’re cutting estimates and price targets en masse, the sell-side community thinks stocks in their coverage universe are an increasingly good value following the market downturn. Last week, for instance, there were nearly three times as many upgrades as downgrades.