What are we looking for?
In the midst of earnings season, let's look around the world to find the biggest profit recoveries.
More about today's screen
Judging from the companies that have reported so far, it looks like this is going to be a good quarter for earnings. But let's find out where the most optimism is. We'll look at the 10 main sectors around the world and at earnings estimate increases or decreases for this quarter and the next 12 months. We'll also look at how much the estimates have increased or decreased over the past 30 days and 60 days. We'll use StarMine today, which is a service that gathers earnings estimates data and helps dissect where the trends are. Companies need to have a market capitalization of $50-million (U.S.) to be included.
What did we find out?
Expectations for banks have taken off. Over the past month, analysts have increased profit estimates by 26 per cent for the next 12 months. If you drill down further however, there is just one sub-sector that is driving that strength. Analysts have increased their estimates for the nearly 1,000 commercial banks around the world by a stunning 115 per cent over the past 30 days. The other seven financial sub-sectors have generally changed only by a percentage point or two over the same time. As a group, commercial bank stocks are up 2.3 per cent over the past month and 10.1 per cent over the past two.