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It has been a week.
Stocks entered the green for the year as investors cheered the US-China trade thaw. Five CEOs this week reminded me that this is a truce, not an agreement, and one top Fortune 500 executive who recently met with the Trump administration to discuss tariffs told me the 30% level could be the new norm, barring a major breakthrough.
The “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks — Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL), Meta (META), Tesla (TSLA), and Nvidia (NVDA) — continued their renewed ascent.
Earnings from economic bellwethers Cisco (CSCO) and Walmart (WMT) didn’t completely suck (though they were not perfect).
We even had some history at the Nasdaq. On his IPO day, eToro’s (ETOR) co-founder and CEO, Yoni Assia, pointed out that his dad took a software company public at the exchange in 1991. They became the first father and son to take a company public on the Nasdaq. You will also notice that we actually had our first major post-“Liberation Day” IPO, though I am hearing that any other big name eyeing public markets will be waiting until the fall, at least.
Through all of this frenzied activity, you may be surprised what has really gotten under my skin.
I am reminded how absolutely useless earnings estimates and corporate guidance (if a company decides to issue it) are in a backdrop where one social media post could blow up a company’s careful financial planning. If you are relying on earnings estimates and corporate guidance to inform your investing decision-making process right now, just stop it. It’s a total waste of time.
“If [CEOs] didn’t get away from [guidance], they should,” former Medtronic (MDT) CEO Bill George said on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid podcast (see video above or listen below). “I think they’re smart to pull it.”
George told me off-camera that, in the 10 years when he was the CEO of Medtronic, he only missed earnings estimates once, in part because he thought the price-earnings ratio on the stock was too high and wanted to reset expectations more reasonably.
So the guy — who also sat on the boards of Target, ExxonMobil, and Goldman Sachs — knows what he is talking about here.
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“I’m just shooting in the wind to give you a number when I don’t know what the ground rules are,” George explained. “If you tell me what the ground rules are, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. But I need to have some ground rules. I’ll tell you when new products are coming to market; I can give you some idea of how we’re going to do revenue-wise and help you figure it out.”
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Look at what’s going on out there.
Walmart reiterated its full-year earnings per share forecast on Thursday after ratcheting down expectations at an investor event several weeks ago. Executives went on to say they would start raising prices (by double digits in some cases, CFO John David Rainey told me and Madison Mills on Yahoo Finance’s Catalysts). If tariffs go back to pre-thaw levels, it may render guidance obsolete.
The stock gets hit. Yet, the guidance is out there. Why bother?
Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz told me last week that he decided to pull guidance altogether because of the trade uncertainty that could spur him to take major price increases on toys soon. United Airlines (UAL) still has its double guidance range out there (which numerous execs have privately made fun of).
Yet despite all the confusion, we have the Street looking for earnings growth north of 10% this year. How is that believable in this topsy-turvy climate? It’s not.
“I guess there’ll be some winners and losers,” veteran strategist and Trivariate Research founder Adam Parker said. “So stock pickers maybe can navigate their way through it. But I think the whole system’s earnings are too high, and they’re going to come down. The stock market can go up when earnings come down, for sure, but they’re higher than normal. And we had tariffs. It just feels like that’s not all in the price [of stocks].”
Maybe I am making a big deal out of nothing on this topic. Drop me a line either way on X @BrianSozzi with your thoughts.
I am just in the camp where earnings estimates and guidance have historically proven to be important drivers of stock prices. To the extent they no longer are, I view it as one more problem for investors to contend with in a challenging 2025.
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor.
Ikuti Sozzi di X @BrianSozzi, Instagram dan di LinkedIn. Tips tentang cerita? Email [email protected].
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