Companies are starting to issue their earnings results for the first 3 months of the year, but don't expect as many of them to give guidance. Listen to what Janney Montgomery Scott's chief investment strategist, Mark Luschini, has to say in the video above.
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You know, one question that's been raised is the extent to which CEOs and CFOs, they're going to get on the conference calls, Mark, and just say, listen, I'm pulling my guidance because I can't, I can't give investors in the street my forecast with any degree of confidence. I'm curious, one, Mark, you know, whether you're expecting that, you think we're going to hear a lot of that. And two, if we, if we do see that, Mark, how you think the market would respond and react.
Well, you know, I think that's going to be a problem for the market. I mean, we already saw, for instance, Delta pull its guidance over the balance of the year. And so, if in fact we're going to see more of that, and I suspect that we will, how can any CEO or any CFO right now project forward given all the oscillations in policy that we've seen on tariffs, let alone the potential benefits that may accrue ultimately from deregulation and obviously the tax cut package that's working its way through Congress as we speak. So there's a lot of machinations that are going to influence projections about earnings and subsequent quarters that I think is going to keep, you know, the corporate suite from being too convicted in what the view going forward is likely to look like. And right now, you know, the S&P 500 estimates are still for about seven or eight percent earnings growth for 2025 over last year. And so hinging on that is going to be any kind of, you know, crystallization around the prospects that that's likely to be achieved. Otherwise, the forward earnings estimates that right now the market is still somewhat richly valued, believe it or not, even with a 14% drawdown at about 18 times those still 12-month forward estimates could continue to see further derating as a consequence if those earnings expectations aren't likely to be met, which isn't going to help the uncertainty that investors are dealing with right now.