Even Big Profits Yield Small Stock Pops in Market Fixated on War

One week into the latest quarterly earnings season, even companies that are clearing Wall Street’s already high bar are seeing little in the way of stock-price jumps — another testament to how much the market is hanging on the US-Iran war.

Only a few dozen of the S&P 500’s companies have published results so far. But the 28 that have posted better-than-expected earnings and sales have only seen their shares outperform the benchmark by 0.85%, on average, right afterward, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data. That’s the smallest since early last year, when President Donald Trump’s tariffs were whipsawing markets, and below the long term average of 1.2%.