Earnings: Everyone Gets A Trophy

The ongoing process of the “wussifcation of America” has now spread from Main Street to Wall Street.

When I was growing up, we played sports. Coaches yelled at us, when we got hurt we were told to “rub some dirt on it” and “walk it off.” When we won a game we were cheered by our parents and coaches, when we lost we were disappointed.

Guess what? We got over it.

Come the end of the year, the top three teams received trophies, the rest were relegated to realizing that next year they would have to practice harder, work harder and play harder in order to win. What was learned is that the higher the bar was set, the more competitive we were and the better we became. 

Somewhere along the way, the liberal left infiltrated the heart of America. Dr. Spock took discipline out of homes and schools and replaced it with coddling and sensitivity training. The concern over “potentially offending” someone became more important than the issues themselves. Freedom of speech, religion and privacy have all deteriorated under this nauseous ideology that somehow, we as individuals, are just too stupid and weak to stand up for ourselves.(Please don’t send me nasty tweets, it hurts my feelings.)

When it came to sports, the “wussification” of America came to fruition with the idea there should be no “winners” or“losers,” and keeping “score” was simply a means to discriminate against those who were “athletically challenged.” 

Everyone gets a trophy.

Unfortunately, the same has become true with Wall Street. In the latest earnings season related nonsense, FactSet produced this gem of “wussification of Wall Street.”

“Overall, 91% of the companies in the S&P 500 have reported earnings to date for the first quarter. Of these companies, 71% have reported actual EPS above the mean EPS estimate, 7% have reported actual EPS equal to the mean EPS estimate, and 22% have reported actual EPS below the mean EPS estimate. The percentage of companies reporting EPS above the mean EPS estimate is above both the 1-year (69%) average and the 5-year (67%) average.”