Charles H. Dow’s thoughts on the impact of earnings expectations
"A general belief that a stock is going to earn a given rate is sometimes as effective speculatively as the actual demonstration of such earnings (Dow, Charles H. Wall Street Journal. Review and Outlook. March 27, 1900)."
Who was Charles H. Dow?
“Charles Henry Dow was an American journalist who co-founded Dow Jones & Company with Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser. Dow also founded The Wall Street Journal, which has become one of the most respected financial publications in the world. He also invented the Dow Jones Industrial Average as part of his research into market movements. He developed a series of principles for understanding and analyzing market behavior which later became known as Dow theory, the groundwork for technical analysis (source: Wikipedia.org).”