JPMorgan Chase points out that the second-quarter S&P 500 earnings data was significantly boosted by the revaluation of the fair value of private equity holdings by large technology companies. Google and Amazon recorded approximately $99 billion and $53 billion in unrealized investment gains, respectively, in the second quarter, primarily related to the increased valuation of Anthropic's latest funding round. These gains contributed 67% of the S&P 500's earnings growth this quarter to Google and Amazon. In the second quarter alone, these one-time gains added approximately $14 to the S&P 500 EPS; including the first quarter of this year, the cumulative impact for the first half was approximately $18. Therefore, while the reported second-quarter net profit of companies currently showing a year-on-year increase of approximately 53% appears to be true, excluding these private equity valuation gains, the actual earnings growth rate is approximately 31%; the margin of earnings exceeding expectations also decreases from approximately 31% to approximately 11%.
