2009 Earnings: A Moving Target

Earlier this week, I mentioned that earnings have been running well ahead of expectations so far this earnings season. Of course, expectations were pretty low.
For all of 2009, Wall Street now sees the S&P 500 earnings $59.80. If we continue to beat expectations, then we have a good shot of exceeding $60.
To put that number in context, here’s a table John Mauldin posted earlier this year of the trend in analyst expectations for 2009.

So expectations are now higher than they were on September 10, 2008. The difference is that the S&P 500 then stood at 1,232.04 compared with yesterday’s close of 979.62.

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on July 29th, 2009 at 8:46 am

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