Monday, April 21, 2008

Three indices doing Air-walk.
























For example:


  • S&P500 earnings is so far on track for $63.22, reflecting a P/E of 21.96. What's "priced in" is the 47% growth to be at $93.41 earnings by next year. Nasdaq is about as "aggresive" as ever.
  • The Dow is even more amazing, with forecast at 4x this year's earnings, at $900 versus currently running at $186.


Since I work in a Fortune 500 company and we are actively downsizing (management target is 20-30% employees out by this year alone), I am wondering how likely at 50% earnings growth is to be accomplished by 30% scale down in capacity. Not to mention the other problems concerning debt cost margin 3x that of last year and the obvious issue with dilution, or if trying to issue stock at this point in time.

Perhaps this is the DISASTER that they were PRICING IN? :)

2 comments:

quads4444 said...

I think GM was the earnings killer in 2007 with their $35B writedown.

If that was a one time event Dow earnings will look a lot better in 2008.

But I don't see the rosy 15X earnings estimate. No way.

MTGSPY said...

Don, also notice for the S&P, how the "estimate" and "current" P/E continues to widen. They used to have a 14 target with actual 16 P/E. Now the target is still 14 with P/E at 22.

And the worst part is that that's because the earnings are down substantially, not the stock price.

I have an article that I want to post about earnings estimate and analyst reliability in general. I may just do it in TF.