The big “surprise” was that bottom lines got crushed by rising fuel costs. As if everyone wasn’t watching it in real time. And the reporting period is for March 31. It won’t be getting better for the period ending June 30 unless these companies have made adjustments. Which they cannot easily do since they have to compete. Most of the big retail companies deliver most of their items from their own hubs to their stores themselves with only a few exceptions. So they are paying more to just transfer goods they may have paid for 2 months ago from point A to point B, at 25%-25% higher transport cost than anticipated when they bought it.
It will get worse from here, because Producer Price Index is up higher than Consumer Price Index.
Yes. First quarter GDP was negative for 2022, and the last quarter of 2021 was not much better. If the second quarter of 2022 is remains negative, it will merely marked the “official “ start of the recession we all knew began trending down into in March 2021.