The Q4 earnings season ramps up in a big way this week, with 437 companies reporting quarterly results, including 129 S&P 500 members. With results from 73 index members already on the books, we will have seen Q4 results from 40% the S&P 500 members by the end of this week.

Decent reports from some of the large banks notwithstanding, the overall tone emerging from the results that we have seen already shows no improvement from the weak trend that has been in place for some time now. Companies are struggling to achieve growth in the current environment of a slowing global economy, the strong U.S. dollar and persistent problems in the Energy sector.

The net result is that Q4 earnings for the S&P 500 index are on track to be below the year-earlier level – the third quarter in a row of negative earnings growth for the index. Recent weakness in oil and other commodity prices has effectively guaranteed that this negative growth trend will continue into the current and following periods as well. In fact, all of the earnings growth for the S&P 500 index in 2016 are now entirely expected to come in the back half of the year, with growth in the first half of the year now expected to be in the negative.

Q4 Scorecard (as of Friday, January 22nd)

Total earnings for the 73 S&P 500 members that have reported results already are up +1.4% on +0.8% higher revenues, with 71.2% beating EPS estimates and 37% coming ahead of top-line expectations. Please note that these 73 index members account for almost 20% of the index’s total market capitalization.

The table below provides the current Q4 scorecard

For the Finance sector, we now have Q4 results from 47.3% of the sector’s total market cap in the index. Total Finance sector earnings are up +11.7% from the same period last year on +1.2% higher revenues, with 69.2% beating EPS estimates and 42.3% beating revenue estimates. These is better growth and pace of positive surprises for the sector relative to other recent periods, though the strong earnings growth rate is solely due to easy comparisons at Citigroup (C). Excluding Citigroup, the sector’s growth rate drops to +0.6% gain from the year-earlier period.

The charts below provide a comparison of the results thus far with what we have seen from this same group of 73 S&P 500 members in other recent periods.