Wall Street’s Ardent Bear Is Sticking With It

Headed into this year, the buy-side had (begrudgingly, perhaps) come around to a pretty bearish outlook for US corporate profits in 2023. If you're old enough to remember January, you may recall that consensus (and here I mean the general macro consensus, not bottom-up EPS consensus) had coalesced around a view that a US downturn was imminent. Fed tightening would finally catch up to the economy, consumers were exhausted, pricing power was set to wane and profits would surely suffer as a result