사회

Corporate Profits Are at Record Highs. These 4 Factors Could Sink Them.

Experts have different theories about what’s driving steep gains. But many agree the window for growth is shrinking. Times are good for big business. In the last quarter of 2025, even though...

NYTIMES 입력 2026.04.18 21:00 0

Corporate Profits Are at Record Highs. These 4 Factors Could Sink Them.

Artificial

Intelligence

A.I. Arms Race

‘Jagged Intelligence’

Publishers’ Problems

Code Overload

Defending Against Cyberattacks

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Newsletter

DealBook

Corporate Profits Are at Record Highs. These 4 Factors Could Sink Them.

Experts have different theories about what’s driving steep gains. But many agree the window for growth is shrinking.

Share full article

An Amazon data center being built in New Carlisle, Ind.

Credit...

Jim Vondruska/Reuters

Peter Coy

April 18, 2026,

8:00 a.m. ET

See more of our coverage in your search results.

Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de búsqueda.

Add The New York Times on Google

Agrega The New York Times en Google

Times are good for big business. In the last quarter of 2025, even though economic growth and job creation slowed to a crawl, pretax corporate profits set a record, reaching their

highest share

of gross domestic product since record-keeping began in 1947.

This year, Wall Street analysts are predicting that profits are likely to be even stronger despite dismal consumer sentiment and high energy costs. For example, Mike Wilson, the chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley, is sticking to his prediction that earnings of the S&P 500 companies will rise 17 percent in 2026.

Optimism that the profit juggernaut will keep rolling drove the S&P 500 to a record this week. Will it? To figure that one out, you need to be able to explain why it’s happening in the first place, which is not easy. Experts have different ideas. However, many of them share a belief that the headroom for further profit growth is shrinking.

Here are some of the leading theories for why profits have soared so high — and what could sink them.

Technology

Suppliers of technology got a huge profit boost from sales of networking gear during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, and they’re getting an even bigger boost from the artificial intelligence boom. The tech sector as a whole has experienced much faster growth in stock prices and measured productivity growth than the rest of the economy, said Jim Paulsen, a veteran market strategist who writes the Paulsen Perspectives newsletter.

Surprisingly, though, strong profit growth hasn’t been confined to tech. An

analysis

last spring by Ricardo Marto, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, found that “the recent surge in corporate profits was driven by retail and wholesale trade, construction, manufacturing and health care,” not tech. Marto said this week that the surge in profits had continued across most of these industries in the year since.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and

log into

your Times account, or

for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?

Want all of The Times?