Earning Season’s Dirty Secret: Missing Is Getting More Expensive

Wall Street has always cared about earnings surprises — but this quarter, the stakes got noticeably higher.

According to fresh data from FactSet, S&P 500 Index companies that missed earnings estimates in first-quarter 2026 saw their stock prices fall an average of 4.9% in the days surrounding their reports.

That’s a dramatic jump from the five-year historical average punishment of just 2.9% for a miss. In other words, the market is now penalizing earnings disappointments nearly 70% more harshly than it has over the past five years.

What’s driving this asymmetry?

This post originally appeared at Money & Markets.