Wall Street is sliding toward losses in premarket trading after Walmart, the nation’s biggest retailer and a bellwether for the health of the American consumer, gave a disappointing 2025 forecast.

Helping to support the fervor has been strong profit reports from Entergy and other big U.S. businesses. Companies in the S&P 500 are on track to deliver nearly 17% growth in their earnings per share for the final three months of 2024, compared with a year earlier. That would be the best growth since 2021, according to FactSet.