Earnings wrap-up: Fourth quarter earnings reports are almost all out and the results have been quite resilient. “With 90% of S&P 500 companies having reported fourth quarter results, the results have impressed investors. So far, 78% of companies beat profit estimates by a median of 7%, while 65% of companies beat revenue estimates by a median of 5%, according to data from Fundstrat.”
Continued earnings and revenue growth like this throughout 2024 should help drive the economic momentum that has caused most everyone to revise expectations from possible recession to a likely soft landing.
Increased economic growth expectations: Economists have continued to update and improve their predictions for economic growth in 2024. The U.S. economy is a reliable provider of growth and expectations are that this will continue throughout the year. GDP projections are up, and forecasted unemployment and inflation are both down.
Artificial intelligence: The hype is real. The uses of artificial intelligence are innumerable and are already making profound differences in the level of workers’ productivity. We can speak from personal experience that AI has made us significantly more efficient and saves countless hours each week. I’ll let the smart people at McKinsey explain the potential boost to the global economy from adoption of AI. It is immense.