US results preview Q2 2026: banks, tech and oil in focus

Fees from the Space Exploration Technologies Corp Class A (NASDAQ:SPCX) IPO and deals linked to the AI bull market will boost Wall Street banks this week as another results season of 20%-plus S&P 500 index earnings growth gets under way.

Investment banks JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM), Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC), The Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS), Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) and Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) post second-quarter figures tomorrow (Tuesday), followed by Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) the day after.

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Nasdaq-listed chip equipment maker ASML Holding NV (EURONEXT:ASML) and Taiwan-based semiconductor foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd ADR (NYSE:TSM) will provide an early read on global tech trends when they report on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOGL) are in the calendar after the closing bell on Wednesday 22 July, but NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) investors will have to wait until 26 August for the chip giant’s quarterly earnings.

Across the S&P 500 index, financial data firm FactSet said Wall Street forecasts are currently pointing to earnings growth of 23.6% over the same quarter a year earlier.

This would mark the second successive period of year-over-year earnings growth above 20%, as well as the S&P 500’s seventh consecutive double-digit growth.

However, FactSet highlights the potential for growth to top 29% should S&P 500 companies continue their record of reporting actual earnings above initial estimates. This would be the best result since the 32% posted in the pandemic rebound of the fourth quarter of 2021.

Earnings growth in the financial sector will be driven by the capital markets industry, which at 15% includes a 30% surge for the sub-sector of investment banking and brokerage.

This follows the record-breaking $86.2 billion (£64.3 billion) initial public offering (IPO) of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is widely thought to have generated fees of more than $500 million for 23 banks that included lead underwriters and bookrunners Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

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Dealogic figures recently showed global equity capital market issuance jumped 73% year-on-year to $729.4 billion in the first half of the year, driven by capital deployed for AI capital expenditure as well as the SpaceX IPO.

Technology accounted for roughly a third of all issuance globally, while the second-quarter performance in the Americas was the second best on record for the region.

The dealmaking trends boosted shares during the second quarter, with Morgan Stanley and Citigroup up by more than 20% over the three-month period and JP Morgan up 11%.

The focus is now on whether capital markets are deep enough to sustain the next wave of mega-deals – with Anthropic and OpenAI waiting in the wings for the second half.

The potential for the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates to combat inflationary pressures has also doused some of the earlier exuberance around the AI capital build-out.

The last time JP Morgan reported results in April, boss Jamie Dimon said the US economy remained resilient, with “consumers still earning and spending and businesses still healthy”.

He added: “Several tailwinds are supporting this resiliency, including increased fiscal stimulus, the benefits of deregulation, AI-driven capital investment and the Fed’s asset purchases.

“At the same time, there is an increasingly complex set of risks— such as geopolitical tensions and wars, energy price volatility, trade uncertainty, large global fiscal deficits and elevated asset prices.

“While we cannot predict how these risks and uncertainties will ultimately play out, they are significant and they reinforce why we prepare the firm for a wide range of environments.”

Dimon reported a 10% rise in first-quarter revenues to $49.8 billion, with earnings per share 17% higher as the Middle East conflict and repricing of inflation and interest rate expectations drove higher levels of activity.

Reuters said Wall Street forecasts showed the US bellwether is set to post earnings per share of $5.70 in the second quarter. This is 9% higher than a year earlier as banks continue to benefit from net interest margin expansion and momentum in commercial and industrial lending.

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The wider financial sector is set to report earnings growth for the quarter of 6.6%, which FactSet notes is above expectations of 5.2% at the start of the period.

The biggest jump in earnings forecasts has been in the energy sector, which is poised for 122.9% growth on a year earlier compared with the 48.2% pencilled in at the end of March.

This reflects a 45% jump in the average price of West Texas Intermediate to $92.55 a barrel, which will boost the results of ExxonMobil Holdings Corp (NYSE:XOM) and Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX) before the market opens on 31 July.

Despite the bottom-line uplift, their shares fell by about a fifth in the quarter after the oil price ended June back below $70 a barrel.

The IT industry has recorded the second-largest percentage increase in earnings estimates out of all 11 S&P 500 index sectors since the start of the quarter.

This has lifted the expected earnings growth rate to 63.3% from 48.6% on March 31, driven by increased optimism around the contributions of Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU), Nvidia and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL).

The shares of Micron, which is one of just three global suppliers of high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators, jumped by more than 200% over the quarter as results in April showed record figures for revenue, gross margin, earnings per share and free cash flow.

Its performance helped the Nasdaq 100 jump 20% and the S&P 500 index by 9.6% in the first six months of the year. The forward 12-month price/earnings ratio for the S&P 500 now stands at 20.5 times, which FactSet notes is above the five-year average of 19.9 times and 10-year average of 19 times.