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Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are part of Zacks Earnings Preview
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For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – April 13, 2026 – Zacks.com releases the list of companies likely to issue earnings surprises. This week’s list includes Goldman Sachs (GS - Free Report) , JPMorgan (JPM - Free Report) and Morgan Stanley (MS - Free Report) .
Q1 Earnings Season to Gain Momentum: What Will It Show?
The market’s undivided attention has been centered on the conflict in the Middle East and its potential impact on the U.S. and global economic outlook.
Friday’s CPI reading showed that the conflict’s inflationary effect is mostly confined to the energy category at this stage, but it will justifiably feed worries that elevated energy prices could eventually bleed into other product categories, as hinted at by the University of Michigan sentiment survey that also came out on Friday. Market participants will be hoping for reassuring headlines out of Islamabad, where negotiations about the conflict will be taking place.
We can hope that headlines about the conflict don’t steal the thunder from the Q1 earnings season, which also takes center stage this week, with more than 60 companies reporting March-quarter results, including 28 S&P 500 members. Banks, brokers, and insurers dominate this week’s reporting docket, but we also have a sprinkling of operators from other sectors reporting results, including Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi, Netflix, J.B. Hunt, and others.
We expect the 2026 Q1 earnings report card to show continued strength and momentum, though market enthusiasm for the March-quarter numbers will likely be tempered by geopolitics-driven macro uncertainty.
Regular readers of our earnings commentary are familiar with the steadily improving earnings outlook we have consistently highlighted over the past year. This improvement in the earnings outlook has been driven mostly by the Tech sector over the past year, with positive Tech sector estimate revisions offsetting negative revisions elsewhere, keeping the aggregate revisions trend in the neutral-to-positive direction.
What has changed over the last couple of quarters is that the positive revisions trend has expanded beyond its aforementioned Tech sector core. We saw this ahead of the start of the last earnings season (2025 Q4), and the trend has strengthened further in the run-up to the start of the 2026 Q1 earnings season.
This context is important to keep in mind as we receive the Q1 earnings reports in the coming days and evaluate how estimates for Q2 and beyond are evolving.
For 2026 Q1, the expectation is that S&P 500 earnings will increase by +13.1% from the same period last year on +9% higher revenues. The chart below shows how Q1 earnings growth expectations have evolved over time.
Estimates have moved higher for 7 of the 16 Zacks sectors since the quarter got underway in January. Q1 estimates have increased for Tech, which has been the consistent trend for more than a year now, but Q1 estimates have also moved higher for the Energy, Basic Materials, Industrials, Construction, Finance, and Business Services sectors.
Rising estimates for the Energy sector are tied to developments in the Middle East, with the sector’s revisions trend shifting from negative in the first two months of the quarter to positive in March. We should note that the revisions trend has remained positive for each of these 6 sectors since the start of the conflict as well.
On the negative side, Q1 estimates have been cut for 9 of the 16 Zacks sectors since the start of the quarter, with the most estimates pressure at the Autos, Medical, Consumer Discretionary, and Utilities sectors.
2026 Q1 Earnings Season Scorecard
The 2026 Q1 earnings season will take the spotlight with Monday’s Goldman Sachs release, but the reporting cycle has actually gotten underway already, with 20 S&P 500 members reporting results in recent days for their fiscal quarters ending in February. All of these companies with fiscal quarters ending in February, including bellwethers like Nike, Oracle, FedEx, and others, are counted as part of our March-quarter tally.
Total earnings for these 20 index members that have reported results already are up +76.6% from the same period last year on +15.2% higher revenues, with 75% beating EPS estimates and 85% beating revenue estimates.
Bank Earnings in Focus
The Finance sector will be front and center this week, with Goldman Sachs reporting on Monday, JPMorgan and other big banks on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley and others on Wednesday, and so on.
Total Q1 earnings for the Zacks Finance sector are expected to +19.9% from the same period last year on +9.2% higher revenues. This would follow the sector’s +17.3% earnings growth on +7.4% higher revenues in the preceding period.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley shares have outperformed JPMorgan and the broader market, reflecting expectations of a rebound in investment banking activity and robust trading volumes.
For a detailed look at the overall earnings picture, including expectations for the coming periods, please check out our weekly Earnings Trends report >>>>What Can Investors Expect from Bank Earnings?
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Zacks Investment Research is under common control with affiliated entities (including a broker-dealer and an investment adviser), which may engage in transactions involving the foregoing securities for the clients of such affiliates.
Zacks.com provides investment resources and informs you of these resources, which you may choose to use in making your own investment decisions. Zacks is providing information on this resource to you subject to the Zacks "Terms and Conditions of Service" disclaimer. www.zacks.com/disclaimer.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss.This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.
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Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are part of Zacks Earnings Preview
For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – April 13, 2026 – Zacks.com releases the list of companies likely to issue earnings surprises. This week’s list includes Goldman Sachs (GS - Free Report) , JPMorgan (JPM - Free Report) and Morgan Stanley (MS - Free Report) .
Q1 Earnings Season to Gain Momentum: What Will It Show?
The market’s undivided attention has been centered on the conflict in the Middle East and its potential impact on the U.S. and global economic outlook.
Friday’s CPI reading showed that the conflict’s inflationary effect is mostly confined to the energy category at this stage, but it will justifiably feed worries that elevated energy prices could eventually bleed into other product categories, as hinted at by the University of Michigan sentiment survey that also came out on Friday. Market participants will be hoping for reassuring headlines out of Islamabad, where negotiations about the conflict will be taking place.
We can hope that headlines about the conflict don’t steal the thunder from the Q1 earnings season, which also takes center stage this week, with more than 60 companies reporting March-quarter results, including 28 S&P 500 members. Banks, brokers, and insurers dominate this week’s reporting docket, but we also have a sprinkling of operators from other sectors reporting results, including Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi, Netflix, J.B. Hunt, and others.
We expect the 2026 Q1 earnings report card to show continued strength and momentum, though market enthusiasm for the March-quarter numbers will likely be tempered by geopolitics-driven macro uncertainty.
Regular readers of our earnings commentary are familiar with the steadily improving earnings outlook we have consistently highlighted over the past year. This improvement in the earnings outlook has been driven mostly by the Tech sector over the past year, with positive Tech sector estimate revisions offsetting negative revisions elsewhere, keeping the aggregate revisions trend in the neutral-to-positive direction.
What has changed over the last couple of quarters is that the positive revisions trend has expanded beyond its aforementioned Tech sector core. We saw this ahead of the start of the last earnings season (2025 Q4), and the trend has strengthened further in the run-up to the start of the 2026 Q1 earnings season.
This context is important to keep in mind as we receive the Q1 earnings reports in the coming days and evaluate how estimates for Q2 and beyond are evolving.
For 2026 Q1, the expectation is that S&P 500 earnings will increase by +13.1% from the same period last year on +9% higher revenues. The chart below shows how Q1 earnings growth expectations have evolved over time.
Estimates have moved higher for 7 of the 16 Zacks sectors since the quarter got underway in January. Q1 estimates have increased for Tech, which has been the consistent trend for more than a year now, but Q1 estimates have also moved higher for the Energy, Basic Materials, Industrials, Construction, Finance, and Business Services sectors.
Rising estimates for the Energy sector are tied to developments in the Middle East, with the sector’s revisions trend shifting from negative in the first two months of the quarter to positive in March. We should note that the revisions trend has remained positive for each of these 6 sectors since the start of the conflict as well.
On the negative side, Q1 estimates have been cut for 9 of the 16 Zacks sectors since the start of the quarter, with the most estimates pressure at the Autos, Medical, Consumer Discretionary, and Utilities sectors.
2026 Q1 Earnings Season Scorecard
The 2026 Q1 earnings season will take the spotlight with Monday’s Goldman Sachs release, but the reporting cycle has actually gotten underway already, with 20 S&P 500 members reporting results in recent days for their fiscal quarters ending in February. All of these companies with fiscal quarters ending in February, including bellwethers like Nike, Oracle, FedEx, and others, are counted as part of our March-quarter tally.
Total earnings for these 20 index members that have reported results already are up +76.6% from the same period last year on +15.2% higher revenues, with 75% beating EPS estimates and 85% beating revenue estimates.
Bank Earnings in Focus
The Finance sector will be front and center this week, with Goldman Sachs reporting on Monday, JPMorgan and other big banks on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley and others on Wednesday, and so on.
Total Q1 earnings for the Zacks Finance sector are expected to +19.9% from the same period last year on +9.2% higher revenues. This would follow the sector’s +17.3% earnings growth on +7.4% higher revenues in the preceding period.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley shares have outperformed JPMorgan and the broader market, reflecting expectations of a rebound in investment banking activity and robust trading volumes.
For a detailed look at the overall earnings picture, including expectations for the coming periods, please check out our weekly Earnings Trends report >>>>What Can Investors Expect from Bank Earnings?
Free: Instant Access to Zacks' Market-Crushing Strategies
Since 2000, our top stock-picking strategies have blown away the S&P's +7.7% average gain per year. Amazingly, they soared with average gains of +48.4%, +50.2% and +56.7% per year.
Today you can tap into those powerful strategies – and the high-potential stocks they uncover – free. No strings attached.
Get all the details here >>
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Zacks Investment Research is under common control with affiliated entities (including a broker-dealer and an investment adviser), which may engage in transactions involving the foregoing securities for the clients of such affiliates.
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Zacks.com provides investment resources and informs you of these resources, which you may choose to use in making your own investment decisions. Zacks is providing information on this resource to you subject to the Zacks "Terms and Conditions of Service" disclaimer. www.zacks.com/disclaimer.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss.This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.