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Including all earnings announcements after yesterday market close, 36% of the Russell 3000 market cap has announced their quarterly results according to FactSet estimates. As was expected in our preliminary estimate provided on April 2nd, earnings have beaten expectations by 3.2%. But excluding the volatile financial sector, the surprise is coming at 5.1%, hardly different from our first 5% estimate. But for the second quarter in a row, we observe that companies are beating their top line (sales) expectations by a hefty 1.6% for the non financial sector. This comes after a 1% beat for the 4th quarter 2010. The financial sector remains volatile. Citigroup missed estimates by more than a billion $ and Wells Fargo was also a big miss. Goldman Sachs took a special charge to pay dividend on...
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