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Investors are returning from the three-day weekend in a bad mood after Apple (AAPL) announced that revenues for the quarter will be weaker than expected due to the impact of the coronavirus on both production and demand. The stock was trading down over 3% on the news, but analysts rushed in to defend it and it is now trading down less than 2%.  Our favorite headline of the morning was the following in all caps on Bloomberg, “APPLE PREANNOUNCEMENT BETTER THAN EXPECTED.” A better than expected warning.  Can’t say we see that often!

In other news, Wal-Mart (WMT) marked the unofficial end to earnings season this morning with a weaker than expected report.  While the stock was initially lower, it has rebounded and is now indicated to open up about 1%.

For a recap of all the latest on the coronavirus, earnings, and economic data, check out today’s Morning Lineup.

Even though earnings season unofficially winds down this morning, there’s still quite a lot of other reports to come in the coming two weeks.  As shown in the snapshot from our Earnings Explorer below, there are still some days where more than 100 companies will report on a given day.  We would note, however, that most of these companies are small in scale.

As far as the results of this past earnings season are concerned, the main takeaway from this earnings season is the improvement in revenues relative to expectations. As shown in the lower right chart below, 61.2% of companies have topped sales forecasts in the last three months, and that’s the highest percentage of beats since early 2019.