Over the last quarter, the “Death of Fundamentals” has become apparent as investors ignore earnings to chase market momentum. However, throughout history, such large divergences between fundamentals and price have resulted in low future returns.
This time is unlikely to be different.
“During the second quarter, analysts lowered earnings estimates for companies in the S&P 500 for the quarter. The Q2 bottom-up EPS estimate (which is an aggregation of the median Q2 EPS estimates for all the companies in the index,) declined by 37.0% (to $23.25 from $36.93) during this period. How significant is a 37.0% decrease in the bottom-up EPS estimate during a quarter? How does this decrease compare to recent quarters?
During the past five years (20 quarters), the average decline in the bottom-up EPS estimate has been 3.2%. Over the past ten years, (40 quarters), the average decline in the bottom-up EPS estimate has been 3.4%. During the past fifteen years, (60 quarters), the average decline in the bottom-up EPS estimate has been 4.6%. Thus, the decline in the bottom-up EPS estimate recorded during the second quarter was much larger than the 5-year average, the 10-year average, and the 15-year average.
In fact, this marked the largest decline in the quarterly EPS estimate during a quarter since FactSet began tracking this data in Q1 2002. The previous record was -34.3%, which occurred in Q4 2008.”
