{"id":119812,"date":"2026-08-24T15:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T15:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/119812\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T15:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T15:55:09","slug":"ubs-says-record-earnings-not-hype-are-driving-one-of-the-most-significant-bull-markets-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/119812\/","title":{"rendered":"UBS says record earnings, not hype, are driving ‘one of the most significant bull markets in history’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"UBS<\/a> UBS says record earnings, not hype, are driving ‘one of the most significant bull markets in history’ Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock <\/p>\n

UBS has dismissed fears of a stock market bubble, arguing that the global rally is built on surging corporate profits rather than the speculative frenzy that inflated share prices in the late 1990s. <\/p>\n

Burkhard Varnholt, a senior financial market adviser at the Swiss bank, said investors were being pulled in by what he called “fabulous earnings momentum” rather than a fear of missing out. <\/p>\n

The distinction matters, because earnings growth that outpaces revenue points to rising margins and productivity rather than to prices detached from underlying value. <\/p>\n

Profits, not prices, doing the work <\/p>\n

Varnholt pointed to profit growth of more than 20% a year in the eurozone, with expected earnings per share up 22% in the first half of 2026 alone. <\/p>\n

Across the MSCI All Country World ex-US index, forward earnings have jumped 36.9% this year and profit margins have reached a record 12.3%. <\/p>\n

South Korea has led the global performance ranking, up 85%, after its forward earnings roughly quadrupled. <\/p>\n

Two booms behind the rally <\/p>\n

The bank framed the surge as the product of two capital-intensive megatrends: the artificial intelligence boom and a sharp rise in security-related spending funded by government budgets. <\/p>\n

Together, UBS estimates, these investment booms amount to around 2.5% to 3.5% of global economic output, a scale it argues will sustain demand for years. <\/p>\n

Varnholt singled out energy as a striking example, noting that earnings in the S&P 500 energy index rose 55.2% this year even as its valuation multiple fell. <\/p>\n

He argued that only two factors matter for markets over the long run, corporate earnings and interest rates, with everything else amounting to background noise. <\/p>\n

A contrarian call on bonds <\/p>\n

On the second of those, UBS pushed back against warnings of a bond market shock from rising long-term yields. <\/p>\n

Varnholt contended that the deflationary force of innovation, now accelerated by AI, is widely underestimated as a check on inflation. <\/p>\n

He also argued that heavily indebted governments tend to suppress long-term rates through what economists call financial repression, rather than allowing yields to spiral. <\/p>\n

That case runs counter to the more cautious tone struck elsewhere in the market, where rising government bond yields have been flagged as the main threat to equity valuations. <\/p>\n

Setting the course at Jackson Hole <\/p>\n

The note coincided with the annual Jackson Hole gathering of central bankers, whose theme this year was innovation and payments. <\/p>\n

UBS said that meeting was quietly setting the direction of the financial system for the coming decade, from digital currencies to instant cross-border payments. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UBS says record earnings, not hype, are driving ‘one of the most significant bull markets in history’ Proactive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[129],"tags":[58468,2125,1079,29971,2128,58469,58467,58466,223],"class_list":["post-119812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ubs","tag-burkhard-varnholt","tag-earnings-growth","tag-earnings-per-share","tag-forward-earnings","tag-record-earnings","tag-senior-financial-market","tag-share-prices","tag-stock-market-bubble","tag-ubs"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117151303413208768","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}