What trees can teach us about markets and eternity

Each year, Central Pennsylvania seems to play host to notoriously odd weather patterns, especially in the spring and fall. (Remember that run of 90s in mid-March before the weather remembered it was about four months too early for that?)

Well, as we’re heading from 50s to 90s and back again as I write this here in mid-May, it got me thinking about an interaction I had with my mother a few years back.

On an unusually warm fall day several years ago, I noticed that the trees were losing their leaves. I remember thinking, “It’s 85 degrees…with falling leaves!?” It just felt so out of place and didn’t seem to make sense. After all, it wasn’t nearly cold enough for leaves to be falling quite yet. It seemed that something with the trees had somehow gone…wrong.

Almost like they never received the memo that it hadn’t gotten cold yet.

I brought up my observation to my mom—the queen of all things plants—and she said, “Well, trees don’t lose their leaves because of the cold. They lose their leaves for a completely different reason.”

Oh? This was news to me. I had no idea what else could cause the change. She went on to enlighten me.

As it turns out, trees respond more to changes in daylight than to temperature.

As the days grow shorter in the fall, a tree eventually reaches a point where its leaves require more energy to maintain than the amount of photosynthesis they can perform. So, the tree sheds them.

It’s highly possible you are well aware of this fact already (I tend to have much more insight into finances than plant rhythms), but this was a revelation to me.

Suddenly, it made complete sense. What we see each year, it turns out, is actually quite a bit more predictable “under the surface” than what the temperature may or may not reflect.

Why are we talking about trees?

Here’s the thing. We’re not actually talking about trees. Well, I mean, we are. But the trees are just an illustration.

Because…

(Ready for this transition? Again, I’m a financial advisor and not an arborist.)

…The markets are often the same way!

We read the headlines and hear about the turmoil and all these world events, and we brace ourselves—as pundits warn—for impending doom with the markets. And sure, sometimes we see volatility for a season. But often, we see the markets settling more quickly or not reacting in the way we expected in the first place. At which point, we throw our hands up and say, “See! The markets just don’t make sense!”

But I want to argue that, just like trees, there’s often a much more predictable pattern at play under the surface.

Often, that pattern is corporate earnings.

Corporate earnings & current markets

The profits companies generate are referred to as their “earnings.” Companies forecast what they expect those earnings to be each quarter, and then report how they actually performed once the quarter ends.

As of May 5, 2026, 84% of companies in the S&P 500 have beaten their projected earnings forecasts this earnings season, well above the five-year average of 78%.

In other words, companies are proving resilient in the current environment.

A recent CNBC article highlighted a few reasons the markets may be more resilient than headlines suggest:

• AI technology is boosting margins
• Increased oil prices have less of an effect on margins than is usually portrayed
• The U.S. economy is less oil-dependent than it has been in past crises.

The article also notes that, according to Bank of America’s Antonio Gabriel, the U.S. only needs about a third of the oil it needed in the 1970s to produce the same amount of GDP.

In other words, the markets are not ignoring the Iran and oil situation—those just aren’t the factors driving the market trend. 

Rather, the earnings companies are producing in the current environment are driving markets.

And companies are signaling that oil prices are not as big a player in their earnings as the headlines would suggest, especially in the technology-heavy US stock market.