S&P 500 Profit Reversals Hard to Stop as Bad Quarters Add Up
Oil companies are expected to post the worst first-quarter results among 10 S&P 500 industries, with profit dropping 63 percent, analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg show. Photographer:
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Analysts predict Standard & Poor’s 500 Index profits are about to decrease for three straight quarters. Investors better hope they don’t.
History shows that once earnings drop for that long, they almost always keep falling, and usually take the market with them. In fact, among 17 declines that got to nine months since the Great Depression, exactly one stopped there, in 1967.