The ratio of negative-to-positive pre-announcements for the third quarter earnings season is running at 4.3-to-1. As Citi's Tobias Levkovivh notes, this is the highest since 4.7-to-1 in Q1 2009 and shows management's clear lack of confidence about even short-term economic performance (elections, fiscal cliff, China slowdown, Europe depression). He, like us, expected management to 'trim back' earnings expectations on their conference calls - especially as Q4 EPS growth estimates at 8% are simply 'too optimistic'. Of course, that doesn't stop the thundering herd of extrapolating analysts from imagining what the world could be like - as the following charts of Q2 2012, Q3 2012, and Q4 2012 earnings growth estimates so clearly indicate. It would seem that with the Fed less able to 'surprise' given its QEternity bazooka has been fired, and China's PBOC stymied, it falls back to Draghi to magically 'enable' the divergence between fundamentals and the market - and after today's more disappointing call, that appears less forthcoming.
S&P 500 Negative-to-Positive Pre-announcement ratio...
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S&P 500 versus Upward Revisions as a % of Total...
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Financials saved us in Q2 - the rest were mixed and mediocre...
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Expectations for the current reporting period are mixed but with some very weak results for Energy, Materials, and Telecoms...
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But of course, all that fear will be gone by Q4...
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It seems the analysts are much more confident of what will occur in Q4 than any and every central banker, politician, CEO, and strategist.
Via Citi:
When investors consider the earnings expectations for the next several quarters, it must be noted that a few sectors seem to have an abundance of optimism that may or may not be warranted. For example, the Materials sector is showing a big bounce in 1H13 earnings projections that may require much more clarity on global economic reacceleration, while Financials are expected to rise sharply as well. Hence, these two areas might require some ratcheting down of forecasts and management teams may begin to do so in the next few weeks.
We have highlighted some of current measures of complacency, which may not be entirely appropriate in the very near term (next couple of months) given the US elections and the related fiscal cliff, recent European social unrest and the need to curtail some of the profit growth enthusiasm. In the medium term (2013), many of the analytical models we use still argue for overall market gains, and thus we believe weakness should be seen as a buying opportunity.
Charts: Citi and Reuters [10]