Soaring profits... but for how long as debt and tariffs bite? Corporate America is currently delivering a parade of positive surprises—66% of S&P 500 companies beat earnings so far, led by AI, fast food, and streaming. Yet earnings outperformance may be more about lowered expectations than real resilience:
- McDonald’s bounced back (U.S. same-store sales +2.5%) after a rare slump
- Disney swung streaming to profit, while boosting its fiscal-year profit target
- AI leaders like Palantir are fueling Wall Street’s bullishness—one analyst now calls its path to a $1 trillion market cap “within reach”
Still, cracks are spreading: Snap and Opendoor stocks cratered after revenue misses; Rivian and Lucid suffered forecast cuts as rising tariffs and fading EV tax credits hit demand. With household debt and delinquencies up, can consumers sustain this pace, or are we seeing “peak resilience”?
