The start of earnings season has had some good news, and some bad news, as I reported on Tuesday. Among the good news is that technology earnings have been holding up well, and Savita Subramanian, an equity and quantitative strategist at Bank of America, noted that Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and Apple will be the biggest drivers of earnings per share growth in the world. Q4, up 56% year over year. Without these six stocks, the rest of the S&P stocks are expected to see earnings decline by 6%. Later on Tuesday, Jeffrey Buchbinder, chief equity strategist at LPL Financial, followed up with a fascinating chart noting that the “Great Seven” — the six mentioned above, with Tesla added — have been leading the S&P 500’s quarterly earnings every quarter for the past year. Excluding the first quarter, it is expected to continue paying S&P dividends through the third quarter of 2024. S&P 500 earnings are expected to grow 11% in 2024, which is a long shot, Buchbinder says, and given his estimates that the U.S. economy will grow by 1. % only this year. “The slow-growing economy we expect will not be conducive to large earnings gains,” he says, which is why his $235 estimate for S&P 500 earnings in 2024 is well below the consensus of $243. Economy and Consumer: No signs of panic from banks yet The Bank of America team also pointed to some interesting macro comments from banks’ calls on Tuesday morning, suggesting that no one is giving up on the American consumer yet. “The US economy has proven to be more resilient than expected… despite a number of headwinds to growth, including a significant tightening of financial conditions, the failure of regional banks, and escalating geopolitical tensions,” Goldman Sachs said. “As we enter 2024, we are positioned to capitalize on opportunities. While downside risks are consumer-related with the interest rate path and geopolitics as key determinants, we expect the US to lead the global recovery,” Morgan Stanley said.