Dow Watch: Bored With Madoff

(At 2:20 p.m. EDT)

The market looks to be as bored with the media coverage of Bernie Madoff's sentencing as I am.

Between the endless coverage of Michael Jackson's untimely death and now Madoff's 150-year jail sentence, I'm beginning to think that there isn't anything else happening in the world.

Iran election conflict? More H1N1 swine flu concerns? I don't know what you're talking about. And who is this Mark Sanford I've heard so little about?

I think the Dow Jones Industrial Average is with me on this one. The blue chip index is trading exactly where it has since the start of the session, holding onto scant gains for the month of June. Alcoa (AA Quote) is still lagging, and Merck (MRK Quote) is the best performer among 24 winning Dow components.

The public really needs to pay more attention to the fact that the end of the second quarter is looming and the next wave of earnings reports is just around the corner. Personally, I can't wait until the current media circus dies down and we can refocus on stocks and these earnings releases.

Some food for thought: John Butters, an analyst with Thomson Reuters, said that the second-quarter earnings growth rate for the S&P 500 stands at -34.9%. Normally, it's hard to draw comparisons between the S&P 500 and Dow, but Butters says that all 10 sectors in the S&P 500 are expecting a year-over-year decline in earnings.

If all 10 sectors finish the quarter with negative growth, the second quarter will mark the highest number of sectors recording negative growth since Thomson Reuters began tracking sector growth rates in 1998, Butters said. No matter how you cut it, that doesn't bode well for the Dow.