S&P 500 Q2 2026 earnings season preview: US WEEKLY KICKSTART

Research evidence excerpt

S&P 500 Q2 2026 earnings season preview: US WEEKLY KICKSTART

Portfolio Strategy Research

26 June 2026 | 5:31PM EDT

US WEEKLY KICKSTART

S&P 500 Q2 2026 earnings season preview

n The 21% S&P 500 return over the past 12 months has been driven entirely by Ben Snider

+1(212)357-1744 | ben.snider@gs.com

earnings, making the upcoming Q2 2026 reporting season an important Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

catalyst for the forward trajectory of the market. Financials will kick off the Q2 Ryan Hammond

+1(212)902-5625 |

earnings season the week of July 13th, and roughly 75% of S&P 500 market cap ryan.hammond@gs.com

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

will have reported results by the first week of August. While the S&P 500 P/E has Jenny Ma

recently declined, this week our Sentiment Indicator of equity investor +1(212)357-5775 | jenny.ma@gs.com Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

positioning rose to 2.0, the highest reading since December 2024 (Exhibit 24). Daniel Chavez

+1(212)357-7657 |

n A solid macro backdrop and the ongoing AI investment boom should lead to daniel.chavez@gs.com

another quarter of strong earnings results despite an elevated hurdle set by

Kartik Jayachandran

analyst estimates. S&P 500 EPS growth registered 17% in Q1, excluding some +1(212)855-7744 |

kartik.jayachandran@gs.com

one-time benefits, which exceeded analyst estimates by 5 percentage points. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

The consensus forecast for Q2 is for 22% year/year growth. The dispersion of Christophe Sung

+1(212)902-3841 |

growth expectations across sectors and stocks is wide. AI infrastructure stocks christophe.sung@gs.com

are expected to contribute nearly 60% of S&P 500 EPS growth this quarter, with

Micron (MU) and NVIDIA (NVDA) together accounting for more than 40%.

Consensus expects the median S&P 500 stock to grow EPS by 9%, but