Third Quarter Guidance Disappoints

Earnings season came to an end last week, and probably the most notable takeaway from the reporting period was how poor guidance was.  Just under 9% of US companies lowered guidance from October 11th through last Tuesday, while 6.8% of companies raised guidance.  This works out to a spread of -2.1 percentage points when subtracting the percentage that lowered guidance from the percentage that raised guidance.

Below is a chart showing the quarterly guidance spread going back to 2003.  As shown, this is the first time since the bull market began in March 2009 that more stocks have lowered guidance than raised.

Subscribe to Bespoke Premium to receive more in-depth research from Bespoke.