Over the past three months (October 15 through January 15), analysts lowered earnings estimates for companies in the S&P 500 for the first half of 2019. The Q1 bottom-up EPS estimate (which is an aggregation of the median EPS estimates of all the companies in the index for Q1) dropped by 5.0% (to $39.37 from $41.43) during this period. The Q2 bottom-up EPS estimate (which is an aggregation of the median EPS estimates of all the companies in the index for Q2) decreased by 4.0% (to $42.36 from $44.13) during this period. Combined (adding the Q1 2018 and Q2 2018 bottom-up EPS estimates), the bottom-up EPS estimate for the first half of 2019 (1H 2019) decreased by 4.5% (to $81.73 from $85.56) over the past three months. How significant is a 4.5% decline in the bottom-up EPS estimate for the first half of a year during this period? How does this decrease compare to previous years?
