S&P 500 Earnings, The 10-Y Treasury Yield, Early Look At Q2 ’17 Earnings

 | Jun 04, 2017 01:03AM ET

It was somewhat surprising to hear/read Larry Fink, the BlackRock CEO make a comment on Q2 ’17 earnings , although it was unclear whether he was talking Blackrock’s (BLK) results as a firm, or the economy / S&P 500 in general. (It looks / sounds like he is talking the S&P 500 in general.)

My own opinion is Mr. Fink is pretty wrong on S&P 500 earnings.

Financials have struggled in Q2 ’17, and unperformed year-to-date, but in my opinion that is already discounted in the prices of a lot of the big-cap Financial names.

John Butters over at Factset notes the reduced pressure on Q2 ’17 S&P 500 earnings (fewer estimate cuts), which is what this blog has been saying since mid-May ’17 (also quoting Factset).

Q2 ’17 Expected S&P 500 earnings growth

  • Cons Disc: +1% today vs +4.3% as of April 1, ’17
  • Cons Spls: +3.5% today vs +4.8% as of April 1 ’17
  • Energy: +707% today vs +869% as of April 1′ 17
  • Financials: +9.3% today vs +10.5% as of April 1, ’17
  • Hlth Care: +2.3% today vs +3.3% as of April 1 ’17
  • Industrials: +1.7% today vs +1.3% as of April 1 ’17
  • Basic Mat: +4.7% today vs +9.9% as of April 1 ’17
  • Real estate: +3.3% today vs +3.5% as of April 1 ’17
  • Technology: +11% today vs +11.5% as of April 1 ’17
  • Telco: +1.3% today vs +5.2% as of April 1 ’17
  • Utilities: -3.35 today vs -0.8% as of April 1 ’17
  • S&P 500: +8.4% today, vs +10.2% as of April 1 ’17

Source: Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S “This Week in Earnings” June 2 ’17

Note the small downside revisions in Technology and Financials (despite the so-called warnings this week by the Financial sector) and note the upward revision to the Industrial’s sector. Those 3 sectors are 45% of the S&P 500 by market cap.

What I worry about this week is the Comey testimony which I believe is set for Thursday, June 8th. There are articles on the political blogs that state the Trump Administration is already trying to thwart former AG Comey’s testimony, which will not look good. The new Deputy AG (Rosenstein ?) is also expected to testify – that may prove more revealing.

Through 5 month of 2017, the S&P 500 is up about 8.5% – 9% year-to-date.

The 10-Year Treasury yield is at a critical level:

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