By Joseph Adinolfi
Wall Street analysts have been raising corporate earnings estimates all summer, while the outlook for economic growth has improved despite a slowdown in the labor market
Now that the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates and signaled more reductions ahead, investors can shift their focus back to what really matters most for markets.
Now that the Federal Reserve has delivered its first interest-rate cut in nine months, investors can shift their focus back to what really matters for their portfolios.
Despite a slowdown in the labor market, the U.S. economic outlook is still strong and Wall Street estimates for corporate earnings have been rising all summer. This could be enough to keep the stock-market rally going for at least a few more months, particularly given that the Fed has signaled more “risk-management” cuts – as Fed Chair Jerome Powell described them on Wednesday – likely lie ahead.
“Some of the recent economic data suggest that the economy is ticking along in much healthier fashion than some of the labor data would have led us to believe,” Michael Brown, a senior research strategist at currency broker Pepperstone, told MarketWatch.
The latest projections from the Fed, released last week, sketched out what some described as a surprisingly rosy outlook for the economy.
“There was nothing recessionary in the Federal Reserve’s September projections, suggesting that even the Fed is confident in the ongoing soft-landing scenario,” said Robert Schein, chief investment officer at Blanke Schein Wealth Management. “A solid economy, even if job growth slows, is still bullish for stocks.”
Earnings growth is key
Strong corporate earnings are essential for keeping stocks buoyant, especially given that valuations for large-cap stocks in the U.S. are at their highest levels in years.
To be sure, Wall Street’s bottom-up estimates for the S&P 500 SPX are still below where they stood at the beginning of the year. But the progress over the summer has helped reassure investors that the rally likely remains on solid footing, said Ben McMillan, chief investment officer at IDX Advisors, during an interview with MarketWatch.
“Interest rates are the price of everything, unemployment is important, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to go back to earnings,” McMillan told MarketWatch during an interview.
S&P 500 earnings estimates, Sept. 19 S&P 500 earnings estimates, June 30 Change (%) Q32025 $67.77 $67.32 0.7% CY2025 $268.83 $264.15 1.8% CY2026 $304.59 $300.15 1.5% Source: FactSet
Earnings expectations for 2025 and 2026 have been on the rise. But even more promising for the near-term outlook: Analysts have continued to raise their expectations for the third quarter.
This is unusual. According to John Butters, senior earnings analyst at FactSet, Wall Street analysts typically trim their forecasts for the current quarter as time passes.
“When we see expectations moving higher during the quarter, I tend to think that’s a good indication that analysts are getting good information,” said Jay Love, U.S. chief investment strategist at Mercer, during an interview with MarketWatch.
If earnings per share for the S&P 500 hits $67.77 for the third quarter, as analysts expect, it would represent a year-over-year growth rate of 7.7%. That would be the slowest quarter-over-quarter growth rate since the first quarter of 2024, Butters noted in a report shared with MarketWatch on Friday. But it would still be the ninth straight quarter of earnings growth.
Earnings expectations aren’t exactly evenly distributed across the index’s members. As has been the case since the bull market began in 2022, technology stocks – particularly members of the “Magnificent Seven” group of tech darlings – are expected to account for the bulk of profit growth realized by S&P 500 firms. Analysts have raised their profit expectations for information-technology companies much more aggressively than for other sectors, FactSet data showed.
Economic-growth expectations defy labor-market slowdown
It isn’t just earnings forecasts. Expectations for third-quarter GDP growth have been climbing, too. According to the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model, U.S. economic output was expected to grow by 3.3% in the third quarter as of last week. That’s compared with 2.3% in late July.
Date Atlanta Fed GDPNow forecast
July 31 2.3%
Aug. 21 2.2%
Aug. 25 2.2%
Aug. 26 2.2%
Aug. 29 3.5%
Sept. 2 3%
Sept. 3 3%
Sept. 4 3%
Sept. 5 3.1%
Sept. 10 3.1%
Sept. 11 3.1%
Sept. 16 3.4%
Sept. 17 3.3%
Source: Atlanta Fed
Digging into the Atlanta Fed’s model, Pepperstone’s Brown said strong data on consumer spending – most notably, a report on retail sales that came in hotter than expected last week – have helped boost expectations. So too did a report from the Philadelphia Fed on manufacturing activity in the region, and other data showing growth in production.
A jump in weekly jobless claims raised some concerns earlier this month, although it didn’t stop stocks from closing at record highs on the day the data were released.
But the latest reading, published Thursday, showed the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits in the seven days ending Sept. 13 retreated to 231,000, from a revised 264,000 in the prior week. This has helped rebut some of the more alarmist takes on the state of the labor market, Brown said – although investors are eagerly awaiting the next monthly report from the Labor Department to learn whether the pace of job creation continued to slow in September. The unemployment rate has also ticked higher over the past few months.
In just a few weeks, the next round of quarterly reports will start rolling in, offering a fresh opportunity to scrutinize Big Tech and the artificial-intelligence theme. It will also give investors more insight into how tariffs are impacting profit margins.
Investors will be paying particularly close attention to what executives say about any tariff-related costs they might be passing on to consumers. Another uptick in inflation remains a risk for markets, said Mercer’s Love, even though Powell has said that he expects any inflationary impact to be a one-off.
Beyond that, creeping doubts about AI technology’s ability to generate profits and improve productivity could also hurt stocks. During an interview with CNBC on Friday, Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari said he hadn’t yet seen any concrete indications that AI was having an impact on the labor market.
A vacuum in fresh economic reports next week could also make investors antsy. The latest reading from the personal-consumption expenditures index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, will be the main event for investors. The third revision to second-quarter GDP growth is also due. But beyond that, next week’s calendar is looking pretty bare – and a paucity of new information could leave markets vulnerable to a pullback, said Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates strategy at BMO Capital Markets.
U.S. stocks finished higher on Friday, with the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite COMP and Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA all tallying record closing highs, Dow Jones Market Data showed – capping off another strong week on Wall Street.
-Joseph Adinolfi
This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
09-21-25 1200ET
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.