“Quite simply extraordinary.”

That’s how SocGen’s Andrew Lapthorne described the recent inflection in consensus profit estimates both for corporate America specifically and for global stocks more generally.

As a quick reminder: Much of the rally from the Iran war lows (and, depending on the benchmark, all of 2026’s YTD gains) is down to soaring forward earnings, which is to say forecasted profits.

The figure on the left, below from Lapthorne’s latest, shows you what he means by “extraordinary.”

Over the past year, forward earnings for MSCI All-Country World Index constituents are up — drumroll — $1.25 trillion or, colloquially, one post-SpaceX IPO Elon Musk.

(That’s right, folks: Musk’s on-paper net worth is about to be equivalent to the largest-ever YoY surge in global aggregate corporate profits.)

The scope of the surge would be impressive enough on its own, but as Lapthorne was keen to point out, we’re not coming out of recession. We’re not lapping easy comps.

As he put it, “bursts of profit growth this strong typically follow a preceding slump — i.e., a lower base effect — [but] that’s not the case this time.”

So, the fundamentals are sound, right? Well, yes, with two caveats. First, and most obviously, these are just projections. And like all projections, they could be wrong.

Second, and despite the fact that realized earnings growth for the typical (i.e., median) large-cap US corporate was double-digits in Q1, upgrades remain “highly concentrated,” Lapthorne noted. Specifically, three-quarters of the upward revision to next year’s earnings is attributable to the top 1% of stocks.

“This leaves the world in a bit of a quandary,” Lapthorne went on. On the whole, the global economy’s apparently in fine fettle, “but if all the profit surge is going to just a few companies,” such perceptions of strength “might be misplaced.”