This Might Take A Minute

About this episode

The episode discusses key takeaways from March company commentary on the Middle East conflict and its impact on the US equity market.

The big things you need to know: First, we review our key takeaways from our review of March company commentary on the Middle East conflict on EPS calls and in conference presentations. What we read adds to our understanding of why the US equity market has been fairly resilient since the Iran strikes, and also leads us to believe that it may simply take more time for the equity community to fully understand the impacts from an extended conflict. Second, other things that jump out this week include much better EPS estimate revisions trends in the top-10 market cap names in the S&P 500 than the rest of the index (a point in favor of mega cap Growth stocks continuing to outperform), the sharp drop in investor sentiment on our AAII model (a bullish data point for the broader market) and the return of the Russell 2000 FY2 P/E to its long-term average (important progress but not a return to “hold your nose and buy” territory).

Topics covered

• Middle East conflict
• US equity market
• EPS estimates
• investor sentiment
• mega cap Growth stocks
• Russell 2000 P/E

Keywords

• Middle East conflict
• EPS calls
• investor sentiment
• mega cap Growth
• Russell 2000
• equity market resilience

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: RBC Capital Markets, S&P 500, Russell 2000

Places: Middle East

More episodes of RBC's Markets in Motion

• The Time is Now – We Need Your Help · June 10, 2026 · 2 min
• From Rotation to Derisking · June 8, 2026 · 8 min
• Investment strategy through the ‘up crash’ and beyond · June 4, 2026 · 19 min
• Earnings Sentiment Broadens Out · June 1, 2026 · 5 min
• Everything in Moderation · May 27, 2026 · 9 min
• London Fog · May 18, 2026 · 6 min