Including the flood of earnings releases from this morning (July 28^th), we now have Q2 results from 245 S&P 500 members or 49% of the index’s total membership. On a market cap basis, the companies that have reported account for 55.8% of the index’s total market capitalization.

At this halfway point in the Q2 reporting cycle, total earnings for the companies that have reported are up +1.4% from the same period last year on +11% higher revenues, with 75.5% beating EPS estimates and 65.7% beating revenue estimates.

This is a lower beats percentage for this group of 245 index members relative to what we have seen from the group in other recent periods. In other words, fewer companies are able to beat consensus estimates relative to other recent periods and the magnitude of their beats are also smaller.

On top of inflationary pressures and supply-chain challenges that companies have been dealing with for some time now, we are also hearing a lot more about the negative impact of the strong U.S. dollar and signs of weakness at the lower-income level of consumers.

The focus lately has been on the Tech sector, where digital advertising spending has started weakening already. We saw this at first with Snap (SNAP Quick QuoteSNAP - Free Report) , with Alphabet (GOOGL Quick QuoteGOOGL - Free Report) and Meta Platforms (META Quick QuoteMETA - Free Report) also confirming some of those softening trends.

Spending on software and equipment appear to be still holding up. This was confirmed by Microsoft (MSFT Quick QuoteMSFT - Free Report) and others.

For more details about the Q earnings season and expectations for the coming periods, please check out our weekly Earnings Trends report >>>>A Stable Earnings Picture Despite Many Headwinds.