Yet Wall Street stock analysts continue to forecast gains in corporate earnings and revenues as far as the eye can see. The consensus on Wall Street, based on IBES data from Refinitiv, is that corporate America will achieve higher earnings and revenues in every quarter through the first three months of 2024. That’s the most distant date on Wall Street radar.Don’t take these rosy estimates too seriously.“We’re clearly on the downside of the profits cycle, but you don’t see that in the Wall Street estimates, not yet,” said Richard Bernstein, a former chief investment strategist at the old Merrill Lynch who now runs his own firm, Richard Bernstein Advisors. “Eventually, you will.“Wall Street analysts are neither at the beginning nor the end of anything,” he continued. “They’re always positioned in the middle. When you start getting ‘negative surprises’ in corporate earnings — when a lot of companies aren’t meeting expectations — analysts will say at …
