Prepare for the doldrums

The holiday season is no longer expected to pull corporate earnings out of a recession that has lasted the entire year.
Earnings in the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.22% are now projected to decline 1.51% in the fourth quarter from the year before, according to a FactSet computation of analysts’ average forecasts for individual companies. An earnings recession is defined as two quarters or more of consecutive year-over-year declines, and earnings for S&P 500 components dipped in the first two quarters of 2019 and are all but certain to do so again in the third quarter — with nearly 95% of calendar third-quarter reports posted, earnings have dropped 2.34%, the biggest decline so far this year.

A rolling recession around the economy is my guess, never meeting the blue bar criteria. But I am usually wrong.  One of the big states, Texas, California or New York could be hit worse and drag us down.