The long-term economic impact of the Brexit is still a topic of hot debate on Wall Street, but Argus believes the Brexit is about to take a backseat to Q2 earnings season in the minds of U.S. investors.

Alcoa Inc AA 3.26% is set to kick off earnings season on Monday, and Argus believes U.S. companies will deliver better numbers than most analysts are expecting.

Consensus analyst expectations are for the S&P 500 to deliver a roughly 5 percent year-over-year earnings decline in Q2. Argus is calling for a more modest decline of 1–3 percent. Excluding the energy sector, Argus is actually expecting a slight uptick in earnings.

The big danger the firm sees is not with the numbers U.S. companies will deliver for Q2. Instead, it’s with the guidance they will issue for the rest of 2016.

While expectations for Q2 are relatively low, a strong U.S. economy, jobs growth, cheap gasoline and a stabilizing energy sector have led to increasing optimism about earnings in the second half of the year.

“Against this backdrop of heightened expectations, guidance for 3Q earnings better be…

Click here to continue reading

Want to learn more about how to profit off the stock market? Or maybe you just want to be able to look sophisticated in front of your coworkers when they ask you what you are reading on your Kindle, and you’d prefer to tell them “Oh, I’m just reading a book about stock market analysis,” rather than the usual “Oh, I’m just looking at pics of my ex-girlfriend on Facebook.” For these reasons and more, check out my book, Beating Wall Street with Common Sense. I don’t have a degree in finance; I have a degree in neuroscience. You don’t have to predict what stocks will do if you can predict what traders will do and be one step ahead of them. I made a 400% return in the stock market over five years using only basic principles of psychology and common sense. Beating Wall Street with Common Sense is now available on Amazon, and tradingcommonsense.com is always available on your local internet!