Wall Street Journal (May 13)
“Economist Burton Malkiel might have called the stock market ‘a random walk,’ but investors could at least use earnings guidance by companies as road signs. Now they are largely walking blind.” With on-again, off-again tariffs, “nobody knows what the economy will look like in a few months’ time.” Some companies are leaning heavily on assumptions. “Others, such as General Motors, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble, have lowered targets, while Volkswagen excluded tariffs from its outlook. United Airlines, creatively, offered one scenario for a stable environment and another for a recession.” Other companies have simply thrown in the towel. “Ford, Jeep-owner Stellantis, Delta Air Lines, and UPS took another route, scrapping their 2025 guidance altogether.”
Tags: Assumptions, Blind, Delta Air Lines, Earnings guidance, Economist, Economy, Ford, GM, Investors, Malkiel, Outlook, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Random walk, Recession, Scenario, Stable, Stellantis, Stock market, Targets, Tariffs, United Airlines, Volkswagen
Financial Times (August 4)
In what’s regarded as “a notorious feature of the world’s second-biggest equity market,” the Nikkei newspaper somehow very accurately “previews” earnings results days or weeks before they are officially reported. Authorities in other jurisdictions might worry “about disclosure violations, or a lack of equal access to price-sensitive information…. In Japan, regulators seem to have turned a blind eye to the ‘Nikkei previews.’” As these are only available in Japanese, they may place “non-Japanese readers at a disadvantage,” along with those who don’t read the newspaper and rely instead on the company’s official public results announcements.
Tags: Authorities, Blind, Disadvantage, Disclosure violations, Earnings results, Equal access, Equity market, Japan, Nikkei newspaper, Notorious, Previews, Regulators
