Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon, today's Thursday, July 20th, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn.

Earnings continue to roll in and will get to some big names later on, but first I want to share a

prediction that's generating a lot of chatter.

Historically, passive S&P 500 investors have been able to count on 10% annual returns

on average. But a lot depends on when you enter an exit, of course. For the next decade,

the return on U.S. stocks may not average much more than bonds

according to strategies for Bernstein who are looking at data going back

more than 100 years. For stocks Sarah McCarthy and Mark Diver say the Schiller PE, which uses a long-term inflation-adjusted view of earnings to reduce the effect of swings, is a good predictor out 10 years.

They say the current level of the Schiller PE in the US is elevated at 29.3 times

compared to history and implies returns of just 4% over the next 10 years. That's down from 12% in the previous decade.

For bonds, the current US 10-year yield is the best predictor, they say,

noting US bonds have delivered a meager 1.3% total return annualized since 2013.

That's almost an all-time low.

But this is expected to improve to 3.5% due to higher inflation and the rate tightening cycle.

I'll put a link in the show notes to the story where you can get charts for all these projections,

and there'll be one in the Wall Street lunch story on Seeking Alpha.

Now on the earnings front.

JNJ topped Wall Street forecasts thanks mainly to better than expected results in

pharmaceutical and medtech.

The company also raised the midpoints of its 2023 full-year guidance, excluding sales of its COVID-19 vaccine.

Abbott Lads beat estimates.

...