Things are about to get interesting this earnings season. The banks unofficially kicked off reporting on Friday with mostly good results. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) beat expectations on both the top and the bottom-line, driven by higher investment banking revenues, while equity trading revenues came in flat year-over-year (YoY), and fixed income, currency and commodity (FICC) trading fell 34%. On the flipside, Wells Fargo (WFC) missed earnings and revenue expectations and only reported very low single-digit increases in YoY growth on each metric. In other financials news, fellow commercial bank PNC Financial (PNC) and asset manager BlackRock (BLK) crushed estimates.

The S&P 500 is expected to show EPS growth of 11.0% for Q4, marking a return back to the double digit growth rates seen in the first half of 2017. However, with markets at all time highs, investors are expecting corporations to put up big numbers in order to justify current prices. With the stakes this high, it’s unlikely that merely meeting expectations will suffice.

With that said, leading and lagging sectors remain relatively the same as last quarter.

Energy is leading the pack right now with expected growth of almost 129% due to easier year-over-year comparisons. If you remove energy, index growth is almost cut in half to 6%, still above the 20 year historical average. Energy is expected to continue its upward climb in 2018, with Brent Crude oil prices hitting a 5 year high of $70 last week, shrugging off rising US rig counts.

Growth in Materials takes the second spot this season, for similar reasons. After struggling through a rough 2015 – 2016, the sector started to make a comeback last year and continues to improve, with EPS growth expected to come in at 30.2% and revenues at 19.6% led by the Chemicals and Metals & Mining industries.

Following materials, technology is expected to see the third highest growth rate of all the sectors with profit growth of 18.1% and revenue growth of 11%. All 10 industries within the sector are estimated to record positive numbers this quarter, led by Internet Software & Services and Semiconductors. It’s important to note that there is a big shake up coming to the Global Industry Classification Standards (GICS) that may impact tech’s high growth rate starting in the third quarter of this year. Internet Software & Services includes two big FANG names, Facebook (FB) and Alphabet (GOOGL). On Thursday, S&P Dow Jones Indices and MSCI said they would be renaming the Telecom Services sector to the Communication Services Sector, and would expand it to include these two names, as well as FANG counterpart Netflix (NFLX), and Comcast (CMCSA).

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