Citi’s chief U.S. equity strategist Tobias Levkovich published a research report noting that overall first quarter S&P 500 earnings exceeded consensus expectations. Mr. Levkovich also reduced his own forecast for earnings in a way that provided a good example underscoring a pervasive sense of anxious ambivalence for portfolio managers and analysts,
By ambivalence I don’t mean apathy – everyone still cares where the market’s going next. The sentiment is more a throwing up of hands, a “this could get really, really bad. Or not. I dunno, no way to tell.”Risks of a major market calamity are certainly rising. Morgan Stanley’s global head of economics Chetan Ahya generated considerable media attention Monday withthat they were not taking the economic risks of a trade war seriously enough.
Mr. Ahya prefaced all this by noting “Given the many twists and turns in the trade talks thus far, we admit that the outcome is highly uncertain.”