Earnie wrote:
Earnings Scorecard: For Q4 2018 (with 46% of the companies in the S&P 500 reporting actual results for the quarter), 70% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive EPS surprise and 62% have reported a positive revenue surprise.
“The bad news is that while companies are still reporting generally strong earnings, the good days are about to end with a bang as a result of the recent barrage in profit warnings and negative preannouncements, first and foremost starting with Apple, which issued a shocking guidance cut one month ago for the first time since 2001.
As a result, during January, analysts lowered earnings estimates for companies in the S&P 500 for the first quarter, and the Q1 bottom-up EPS estimate dropped by 4.1% (to $38.55 from $40.21) during this period.”
—Zerohedge, 2/3/2019