Earnings Datapoint of the Day

Floyd Norris reports today that the S&P 500, in aggregate, is about to report its first quarter ever of negative earnings.

Howard Silverblatt, S.&P.’s index maven, reports that with almost three-quarters of the companies in the index having reported fourth-quarter numbers, the loss per S.&P. share is now $6.32.

If the rest of the companies average out at zero earnings for the quarter, that would put the S&P 500 on a price-to-annualized-quarterly-earnings ratio of about -33. Yikes.