Earnings season is winding down in the US, with around 80% of companies so far beating estimates.
This comes despite the recent banking chaos, and a potential recession looming.
While this may seem like good news, it is worth noting that Wall Street set lower earnings targets this time around, amid the financial uncertainty.
Aidan Donnelly, Head of Equites with Davy, said forecasts have come down over the last two months.
"While there is a lot of hoop and holler when numbers come in that are better than expected, you have to look at where the expectations have come over the previous couple of weeks," Mr Donnelly said.
Given the fact that the majority of companies have surpassed estimates and reasonably well, Mr Donnelly said we have seen earnings forecasts move up over that period.
"At the end of March when the first quarter ended, most analysts were looking for earnings to fall about 7% year-on-year, that number is only down 2% year-on-year, so we have seen a substantial improvement over the last while," he said.
So, are this season's upbeat earnings being reflected in the stock market? It would appear not.
Speaking on Morning Ireland, Mr Donnelly said we have not seen a substantial increase in share prices following positive numbers.
"But where companies have managed to disappoint, we have seen fairly substantial falloffs in share prices," he added.
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When it comes to the big US tech companies, Mr Donnelly said the corrective action many have taken on the costs side, by cutting jobs for example, has helped profit margins to come back up again having been a bit depressed.
Meanwhile, the big US banks have all reported strong results, in part benefitting from the deposit flow into the larger lenders as a result of the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank.
"People want to make sure that their deposits are safe," Mr Donnelly said.
"The smaller banks are a little bit worried about lending because they don't want to let themselves stretch - if they were to lend out all the deposits and suddenly people were looking for their deposits back they would be stuck for liquidity," he said.
"So we are seeing some of those smaller banks rein in their lending and that is what is in the back of the Fed's mind in terms of pausing interest rates at this point in time," he added.
He explained that a reduction in credit will feed into the economy and slow things down in the way that a rate increase would.
As earnings season draws to a close, US investors are now turning their attention to another major hurdle for the economy and the markets - the US debt ceiling.
The US President is due to hold a meeting later today to discuss whether a deal can be agreed to allow the US to borrow more.
"We've seen this so many times in the past and it goes right up to one minute before midnight, and normally an agreement is made," Mr Donnelly said.
"Ultimately, at the end of the day politicians will realise that the last thing there are going to do is see the US government default on its debt or basically shut down government infrastructure because there is not enough money there," he said.
