The second quarter earnings during the pandemic Since the 24^th of July, 26% of the S&P 500 companies have already announced their Q2 results (second quarter). 81% have had a positive earnings surprise while 71% have had a positive revenue surprise. However, this cannot really be considered “surprising” as this was based on the expectation that there was going to be a 44% decline in earnings for companies. So, even though there was a positive earnings surprise, in actuality, we had experienced a largest decline since Q4 (4^th quarter) of 2008. 4^th quarter in 2008 vs 2^nd quarter in 2020 Changes in the equities market since 17^th June 2020 Source: Yahoo! Finance During Q4 in 2008, there was an announcement of there being a 69.1% drop in earnings. The stock market was directly correlated to this decline, with the stock market itself similarly experiencing a decline of 60-70%. However, when we compare this dip to the previous decline in 2008, we can observe that there is an...