Key Takeaways

• Earnings season starts this in earnest this week with the arrival of several quarterly reports from big U.S. banks.

• Analysts are watching themes including the expectation of continued growth and the effect of tariffs on corporate results.

• Key results due to arrive include JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, PepsiCo, and Netflix.

The big-bank earnings reports due this week mark the quasi-official start to the second-quarter earnings season. Analysts expect growth, but they’re also eyeing the effects of tariffs as President Donald Trump’s trade policy continues to evolve.

The numbers are landing with plenty already on investors’ minds, from ongoing trade-policy drama to questions about the path forward for interest rates. Stocks have risen lately, finishing last week just off record highs.

Big banks including JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Morgan Stanley (MS) could offer insight into consumer health and the appetite for deals. Other companies that will likely offer clues about broader themes include consumables giant PepsiCo (PEP) and chipmaker TSMC (TSM). Netflix (NFLX) is also set to report, making it the first of the "FANG" (and, for that matter, "FAANG") stocks to deliver its numbers.

Here are three themes to watch for as results for the quarter—covering April through June in most cases—start to roll in.

Analysts are looking for growth. S&P 500 EPS is seen rising 4.1% year-over-year, according to a recent report from UBS; companies that have already reported their numbers, the bank observed in late June, have beaten estimates by more, on average, than the longer-term trend.

Historically, UBS said, expectations “start too high, are adjusted lower heading into reporting season, and could come in slightly higher vs. expectations.”

S&P 500 companies reported double-digit year-over-year earnings growth in the first quarter for a second-straight period, according to FactSet.

There are also signs of caution. Wall Street analysts cut their estimates for S&P 500 companies’ earnings more than usual during the second quarter, according to a FactSet analysis published July 3.

The combined bottom-up earnings-per-share estimate for the companies in the index fell more than 4% between the end of March and the end of June, FactSet said, more than the average seen in the past 5, 10, or 15 years. (It was in line with the average for the past 20 years.)

Trump’s tariffs are likely to be a hot topic. Deutsche Bank analysts on July 7 estimated that tariffs will ding second-quarter earnings for the S&P 500 by about 2 percentage points, with the “hit” likely to increase in the second half of the year.