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Picture du Jour: It’s earnings, stupid!
The reporting season for the first quarter’s earnings started on Tuesday with Alcoa kicking off the season with a loss of $497 million. For some perspective on the current earnings environment, Chart of the Day provided a graph that compares the performance of S&P 500 earnings during the current economic recession (red line) with that of the last recession (gold line) and the average recession from 1936-2006 (blue line). As the chart illustrates, the current decline in earnings is significantly worse than the average decline during a recession. “The current decline is also more severe than the most severe earnings decline on record – the decline that began in 2001 (gold line),” said Chart of the Day.
Source: Chart of the Day, April 9, 2008. Worse-than-feared earnings reports and guidance are key to the near-term outlook for the stock market. We’ll be paying close attention to the degree of ugliness.
More on this topic (What's this?) Scary: Why China is Buying Gold Like Mad (Learn Mining News, 1/30/12) Why the Gold Slump is Not Over (Investment U, 1/9/12) Gold and Silver Are Headed for Record Highs (Wealth Daily, 1/31/12)  1 comment to Picture du Jour: It’s earnings, stupid!Leave a Reply |
![[Most Recent Charts from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_4.gif)
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By Prieur du Plessis, on April 9th, 2009 posted in: 
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[...] For more discussion about the direction of stock markets, also see my recent posts “Video interview: ‘The tide is turning,’ says Prieur du Plessis“, “Emerging-market equities show leadership“, “Technical talk: Sentiment review“, “Video-o-rama: Five in a row for stock markets“, and “Picture du Jour: It’s earnings, stupid!“. [...]