Wall Street’s major averages are rebounding this week, hitting their highest levels in more than a month on Wednesday as tech stocks rallied. This sparked rumors of bulls returning to the market, with early innings corporate earnings holding wide. But strategists at Goldman Sachs and elsewhere said this week they don’t believe that bear market has bottomed yet, amid fears of recession and high inflation. Earnings According to Sharon Bell, senior European equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, one of the key factors in determining the floor is earnings. “We don’t think this bear market is quite over,” she told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Tuesday. “I think we haven’t really seen earnings estimates come down yet…margins are still quite high.” She added that valuations, particularly in Europe, are “certainly not at the lowest levels that you normally see in a bear market, so yes, I think there are downside risks.” Bell said the first half of this year had been “pretty good,” with reasonably strong economic growth, and that even with high inflation, companies were able to pass on some of those additional price increases. she adds. “But I think it will become more difficult to pass on to consumers and we expect margins to be squeezed,” Bell said. Analysts forecast earnings per share of $226.92 by the end of this year, or year-on-year growth of 10.05%, and $246 by the end of 2023, or 8.69% , according to FactSet. In a recessionary scenario, these numbers might look worse. In Europe, profits fall about 20% to 30% in an average recession, while the median has been around 14% for the S&P 500 over the past eight recessions, according to Bell. She said margins and earnings estimates should drop from here. “So yeah, I think there’s still [risks] down,” Bell said. “We still have a bit of a way to go. Inflation The second factor in determining whether the bear market has bottomed out is peak inflation, according to Goldman. headline inflation has peaked above 3% in the US 13 times since 1950 – and the S&P 500 has typically fallen before those peaks, and on average rallied after the peaks. -Rally peaks have benefited from at least one of three factors: a sharp inflection in economic growth, undemanding valuations and falling rates,” Bell wrote. So are we close to peak levels for the next few months before dropping in late fall. In the UK, it could peak in October. U.S. inflation climbed 9.1% in June from a year ago, above estimates and marking the fastest pace since November 1981. What the Fed is doing counts Wolfe Research expects this bear market rally to be short-lived, saying its bearish base case remains intact.” We primarily attribute the recent rebound to investor sentiment (which is a counter-indicator) hitting extreme lows, which has set the markets stocks to a strong near-term rebound,” he said in a note on Wednesday. In a separate note on Tuesday, analysts at Wolfe Research said trading “will likely remain very choppy,” with further rallies in the bear market in the coming months.The research house does not see stocks bottoming in the medium term until investors have more clarity on the future moves of the US Federal Reserve.The firm said that she thought the Fed had to two fundamental choices: to tighten policy sharply and trigger a deep recession that “crushes” inflation, or to tighten moderately and cause a milder recession that does not solve the inflation problem. Most analysts now expect the Fed to hike rates by three-quarters of a point this month — not a full percentage point as some suggested last week .
Goldman Sachs explains why the bear market is not over