Earnings live updates: Goldman Sachs results kick off earnings season as macro pressures mount

Wall Street expects the S&P 500 to post its sixth straight quarter of double-digit earnings growth, with analysts now forecasting 13.2% year-over-year earnings growth. The week’s key catalysts are first-quarter results from major banks, plus Netflix, Johnson & Johnson, ASML, and PepsiCo, as investors assess profits against risks from geopolitics, AI, and delayed Fed rate cuts. Goldman Sachs already reported stronger profits on surging M&A and equity trading, though its fixed-income intermediation revenue disappointed and the stock fell 3% premarket.

Analysis

The near-term setup is less about the headline earnings prints and more about dispersion inside the market. Banks can look broadly fine on reported EPS while still underwhelming on the parts that matter for forward multiples: funding costs, deposit beta, and the durability of trading/M&A tailwinds. If the tape continues to reward top-line beats, the best risk-adjusted expression is likely not outright long banks, but long the highest-operating-leverage names versus the weakest balance-sheet/low-fee franchises.

GS is the cleanest way to express a reflation in capital-markets activity, but the market is already signaling that trading strength is being treated as cyclical and potentially transitory. That creates a narrow window: if Q2 pipeline commentary does not confirm follow-through in advisory and underwriting, any beat could be sold quickly. FAST is more interesting as a macro tell than as a single-name trade; margin pressure there is an early warning that industrial customers are still cautious, which argues for downside in cyclicals that depend on an accelerating restock rather than a hard recovery.

The upcoming mega-cap reports are likely to matter more for sentiment than for direct earnings revision risk. NFLX can re-anchor the market’s willingness to pay for secular growth if engagement and ad-tier monetization offset a soft consumer backdrop, while ASML is the highest-beta read-through on AI capex durability. PEP and JNJ are defensive, but if the market starts pricing a slower demand environment, they become sources of funds rather than catalyst names; that favors relative underperformance in staples versus semis if the AI spend cycle stays intact. The contrarian risk is that consensus is underestimating how quickly banks and industrials can disappoint once the one-off trading and inventory benefits fade over the next 1-2 quarters.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long GS / short a basket of regional or lower-fee banks for the next 2-4 weeks: use GS as the highest-quality capital-markets lever while hedging against a broad banking selloff if net interest income commentary softens.
• Short FAST into strength over a 1-2 week horizon: the market is likely to extrapolate margin pressure into a broader industrial slowdown, and FAST is a clean leading indicator for cyclical caution.
• Buy ASML call spreads into the print, 1-3 month tenor: the risk/reward is favorable if management confirms AI-related wafer-fab demand, but cap upside with spreads because the stock will likely react to capex guidance more than current-quarter numbers.
• Pair long NFLX versus short PEP for 1-2 months: if the consumer is resilient enough for discretionary streaming but not for staples multiple expansion, this creates a clean relative-growth trade with lower macro beta than outright longs.
• If JPM/C/BAC/WFC/MS all rally on earnings, fade the move with short-dated call overwrites or put spreads: consensus is likely overpaying for cyclical upside, and post-print compression could arrive quickly if guidance is merely average.