Full record
MissmarketsS&P 500 earnings per share grow about 10% in 2020.
A scored prediction by Tom Lee, made on .
Scored prediction
Missmarkets“EPS +10% in 2020”
S&P 500 earnings per share grow about 10% in 2020.
- Made on
- 2019-12-19
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 3 / 5
- Effect on score
- -1.33
What counted as right
- Status
- resolved
- Settled on
- 2020-12-31
S&P 500 calendar-2020 earnings per share (S&P Dow Jones Indices operating-EPS series) finish at least 8% above calendar-2019 EPS, operationalizing 'about 10%' as the stated figure less 2 percentage points or better. A decline in 2020 EPS is a miss.
Criterion required calendar-2020 EPS at least 8% above calendar-2019 on the S&P Dow Jones Indices operating-EPS series, and states explicitly that "A decline in 2020 EPS is a miss." That clause fires: the named series fell from $157.12 (2019) to $122.37 (2020), about -22.1%, roughly 30 percentage points short of the +8% bar. Sourcing caveat, disclosed for transparency: S&P Dow Jones Indices' own spreadsheet (spglobal.com/spdji .../sp-500-eps-est.xlsx) could not be retrieved - spglobal.com returns 403 / an error page to automated fetches, and no Wayback capture of that file was available. The YCharts page carries the same series and attributes it to Standard and Poor's, and its quarterly values sum exactly to the widely cited $157.12 and $122.37 annual figures, so the series identity is well corroborated. Direction is unanimous across three independent earnings measures (S&P DJI operating, FactSet bottom-up, as-reported), so there is no credible conflicting evidence. resolved_on is the end of the calendar-2020 measurement period; the full-year figure was finalised during Q1 2021 as Q4 2020 reporting completed. No outcome value assigned - that is a later stage.
Sources
2020 thoughts: EPS +10%, P/E flat to even upside = S&P 500 3,450 and maybe 3,500-3,600
Fundstrat Global Advisors (fundstratdirect.com) ·
Evidence of what happened
S&P 500 operating EPS quarterly series, attributed on the page to Standard and Poor's (the S&P Dow Jones Indices series the criterion names). 2019: Q1 37.99, Q2 40.14, Q3 39.81, Q4 39.18 = $157.12 full year. 2020: Q1 19.50, Q2 26.79, Q3 37.90, Q4 38.18 = $122.37 full year. That is a change of -22.1%, versus the criterion's required +8% or better.
FactSet CY2020 earnings analysis, independent methodology (bottom-up aggregated analyst/reported EPS): "The estimated (year-over-year) earnings decline for the S&P 500 for CY 2020 is -13.7%", described as the largest annual earnings decline since 2008 (-25.5%). Different magnitude, same direction: a decline, not growth.
Third independent measure (as-reported trailing-twelve-month S&P 500 EPS, inflation-adjusted series): $181.25 at 31 Dec 2019 versus $120.68 at 31 Dec 2020 - again a large decline over calendar 2020.
Corrections
No public corrections.
Effect on the score
-1.33- How sure they sounded
- 85%
- Outcome
- Miss
- Importance
- 3 / 5
This page shows the scored prediction as published; the site doesn't recompute or adjust the score.
Where this came from
S&P 500 earnings per share grow about 10% in 2020.- Methodology version
- v1.0.0
- Last computed
- August 5, 2026
- Made on
- 2019-12-19
How this profile was built
Scored by independent judges
Predictions gathered and sourced
Independently verified against sources