Q4 EPS Beat and Miss Rates by Sector

With 776 companies reporting since Alcoa (AA) kicked off earnings season on January 9th, we're now more than halfway through the fourth quarter reporting period. Earlier, we put out a detailed analysis on how sectors have been performing based on their recent earnings reports in one of our B.I.G. Tips reports. The report yielded some interesting data for the market going forward.

Below we highlight a table from the report that shows the EPS beat and miss rates by sector. As shown, Utilities stocks have beaten estimates the most (just 18 companies have reported though), followed by Materials, Technology and Industrials. At the bottom of the earnings beat barrel is Financials at 47.3%. Interestingly, Financial stocks have done exceptionally well this earnings season even though they are beating estimates the least often. This implies that their beat-downs in the last quarter of 2007 were overdone.