S&P 500 Profit Margins Hit a Record 14.8% and Wall Street Is Using It as a Security Blanket
Wall Street wrapped its best quarter in six years, with chipmakers extending their rally to fresh highs. Our latest Bear and Bull survey found 58.2% of readers feeling bullish heading into July, even as fresh data points to a resilient economy. Confidence is holding up, but caution hasn't gone away.
- The S&P 500 climbed in eight of the past 12 months, yet the index declined 1.1% in June — while the Nasdaq 100 declined 0.8% over the same stretch.
- That decline came despite net profit margins for S&P 500 companies surging to a record 14.8% in Q1 — the highest level FactSet has tracked since 2009.
Forward-looking: Wall Street's confidence comes with paperwork. JPMorgan's credit card data shows consumer spending holding up, even as it flags a more value-conscious, bifurcated shopper beneath the surface. That resilience helped push the firm to raise its 2026 EPS estimate to $350, a 29% jump from last year, and its year-end S&P 500 target to $7.8K. Still, JPMorgan isn't ignoring the warning lights, cautioning that speculative momentum trading in secondary AI stocks carries a real risk of a flash crash. If that happens, the bank says BTFD.
