JPMorgan's equity strategy team is urging investors to treat selloffs prompted by the renewed Iran conflict as buying opportunities, arguing that resilient corporate profits should underpin markets through the second half of the year.
In a note published Monday, strategists led by Mislav Matejka said that a strong earnings outlook was a central pillar of their bullish stance for 2026, and that this outlook stands in contrast to views that consensus expectations at the start of the year were overly optimistic.
Despite a second-quarter pickup in geopolitical uncertainty related to Iran, the strategists highlighted that 2026 earnings-per-share (EPS) projections have continued to rise. They pointed out that gains in EPS forecasts are not confined to information technology and energy sectors but are visible across regions.
"Iran conflict is flaring up again, but we think one keeps using the dips driven by this to add, the same stance we had since 2nd half of March," the strategists wrote, reiterating a buy-on-dips approach that the team adopted earlier in the spring.
The note argues that markets have become more practiced at treating geopolitical events as transitory risks, reflecting incentives on both sides to de-escalate. On the fundamentals side, headline consensus Q2 earnings growth looks robust at about 22% year-over-year for the U.S. and roughly 12% for the eurozone. However, the strategists caution that headline figures can overstate the picture and point to median EPS growth as a more realistic barometer.
On that median basis, projected EPS growth sits near 8% for both the U.S. and the eurozone, a level the strategists called "very achievable." Unlike the typical pre-earnings pattern where forecasts are revised downward before results arrive, this cycle has seen continued upward revisions, which JPMorgan does not interpret as a warning sign.
The bank also cited a range of activity indicators that it sees as supportive of further upside to earnings, particularly among cyclical companies. These include improving activity data, a pickup in the OECD leading indicator, a swing of eurozone economic surprises into positive territory, continued improvement in eurozone credit growth, and resilient U.S. jobless claims.
Eurozone earnings revisions have shifted to positive territory and are closing the gap with U.S. revisions for the first time since early 2025, according to the strategists. If the Iran conflict does not re-escalate in the second half, JPMorgan expects the eurozone to deliver strong double-digit EPS growth this year, reversing a period of stagnation that began in 2022.
At the sector level, the strategists see comforting signs in bank earnings and expect semiconductor companies to be well positioned for a rebound as earnings revisions recover despite recent weakness in share prices. By contrast, they note that the energy sector no longer carries the same valuation cushion against fluctuations in oil prices.
JPMorgan also observed that market leadership has broadened beyond a narrow set of mega-cap names, a trend it believes should persist even as markets experience intermittent bouts of volatility. The strategists do not anticipate these periodic swings producing a prolonged market selloff.
Overall, the bank's guidance is to remain constructive on equities and to use geopolitically driven dips as opportunities to add exposure, while monitoring the key risks that could alter the outlook.