Art Hogan Consensus Quotations

We're seeing a nice handful of earnings today. That is going to be the driver. The other driver, or the thing that's not going to hold us back this quarter, and I would argue has held us back the last three quarters, is the consensus is the Fed is done for the year, ... We don't have a credit tightening cycle to go through and we're seeing terrific earnings. So I would argue that the focus returns now to earnings growth, revenue growth, the strength of corporate America and not necessarily the macro-economic themes like monetary policy which have been on the forefront for the last couple of quarters.

The season started upbeat and that was terrific. That helps the overall consensus that the second quarter (reports) will be rosier.

I think 50 basis points (one-half percentage point) is a credible consensus estimate for what the Fed does (at its March 20 meeting). Unfortunately, over the last five or six tumultuous trading days, we've talked ourselves into the fact that the Fed cares about equity valuations, but that's not the case.