Yahoo Finance

We're already seeing earnings estimates come down for companies, right? We're going to get into earnings season in earnest in a couple weeks now. Um, so even after we get the, you know, announcement of more tariffs coming this week, but you think then the markets are going to be kind of bracing themselves for earnings and for commentary from companies.

Well, absolutely. And, you know, you have the tariffs themselves, but you also have the question of the consumer, uh, and their ability to spend and their willingness to spend even absent that. Um, much softer, and the consumer has been resilient, um, but their, you know, what their outlook is can impact their behavior. And we saw, um, a fair amount of that coming through in the first quarter earnings, uh, not so much in the earnings themselves for fourth quarter, but in the guidance for the first quarter. So now that guidance, which has been lowered, um, from for the S&P 500 from an 11% or so growth rate down to 7%, uh, and I think you saw some of the firms going down to 3%, um, for the first quarter. So we've gotten some whiffs of that, and stocks did not react favorably to macro concerns, uh, of the consumer. So when they report those first quarter earnings, the question is, did they lower their guidance enough, or are they going to come in below that? Um, that would be disappointing, of course, and then what's their guidance going to be, um, for the second quarter? And then their guidance for the full year of 2025, um, will be even more telling because now they will have had more time to see if, you know, the damage that they're experiencing, um, in consumer expectations, um, has some legs, uh, for later in the year.