Potential Playouts for Earnings Season

This column was originally published on RealMoney on April 3 at 9:11 a.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. For more information about subscribing to RealMoney, please click here.

When trying to gauge the near-term setup, consensus fuels the flame of the analysis. Some fundamental meat, some psychological beans and some sentiment spice, and you've got yourself a spicy enough chili to make a New Mexican's forehead sweat. So what's the story with the three ingredients right now?

As I listened to CNBC and Bloomberg TV while getting ready for work this morning, I heard, for probably the 298th time in the past week, that profit earnings growth has slowed. Now that's a consensus sentiment. I happen to, for the first time in years, agree with that analysis, which is part of the fundie spice.

Of course, I remember arguing against that same consensus for each of the past three years around the onset of first-quarter earnings season, and the bears (mostly permabears, of course) have been dead wrong each time. Indeed, in tech and away from anything real-estate-related, earnings growth might very well come in with double-digit growth, extending the double-digit streak of double-digit growth. (Nice triple use of the word "double," huh? But I digress.) ...