Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data (by the numbers):
- Forward 4-quarter estimate: $131.50 vs last week’s $131.95
- P.E ratio: 17.6(x)
- PEG ratio: 2.24(x)
- S&P 500 earnings yield: 5.68%
- Year-over-year growth of the forward estimate: 7.88% vs last week’s 7.71% and still shy of recent high of 8%
S&P 500 sectors ranked by year-over-year earnings and revenue growth: (Source Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S)
Q4 ’16 S&P 500 Earnings Growth:
- Financials: +20.9%
- Technology: +10.9%
- Utilities: +10.8%
- Basic Materials: +8.0%
- Cons Staples: +7.0%
- Health Care: +7.0%
- Cons Discr: +3.3%
- Real Estate: +0.7%
- Energy: -0.7%
- Industrials: -1.3%
- Telecom: -1.5%
S&P 500: +8.4%
Q4 ’16 Revenue Growth:
- Utilities: +15.4%
- Technology: +6.8%
- Cons Discr: +5.6%
- Health Care: +5.5%
- Basic Materials: +4.2%
- Financials: +3.3%
- Real estate: +3.3%
- Cons Spls: +3.0%
- Energy: +2.7%
- Industrial’s: +1.4%
- Telco: -1.6%
S&P 500: +4.4%
Analysis / conclusion: Technology has been the best performing sector YTD, up roughly 7% as of Friday morning, February 10th, usurping Basic Materials' lead at the end of January ’17, which was the best performing sector for the month. In 2016, small-cap and value were the best performing sectors, while large-cap and growth have reasserted their respective leadership positions in 2017. There was a big discrepancy in index performance in 2016 as the Russell 2000 returned over 21%, while the NASDAQ and NASDAQ 100 each returned 7.5% and 5.89% respectively.
At year-end 2015, this was posted to this site, just for readers' edification.
Given the top weightings in the S&P 500, with Technology stocks being 4 of the 5 top weightings by market cap, the S&P 500, and Technology are still tied at the hip (or the smartphone) so to speak.
S&P 500 Top 5 components by market cap:
- Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL): 3.5%
- Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT): 2.5%
- Exxon (NYSE:XOM): 1.7%
- Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN): 1.6%
- Facebook (NASDAQ:FB): 1.6%
Tech is back, for now anyway, after a dismal year last year. We wrote this in early December ’16, as Tech badly lagged the “election rally”.