Wall Street is bracing for evidence that corporate earnings deteriorated in the final quarter of 2022 as the Federal Reserve’s war on inflation hit consumer demand and squeezed profit margins, intensifying fears that the
That would represent the benchmark’s weakest earnings growth since the third quarter of 2020, and mark a significant deceleration from the 12 per cent growth recorded in the first quarter of last year. While the street forecasts corporate revenues grew by 8 per cent in the fourth quarter compared to a year earlier, Goldman Sachs said that will be offset by an accelerating degradation in profit margins.P 500 margins this year are expected to fall by 0.5 percentage points to pre-pandemic levels of 11.3 per cent.