Live Markets-Earnings Keep Driving the Market Higher

Main U.S. indexes edge red

Energy leads S&P 500 sector gainers; Comms svcs is weakest group

Euro STOXX 600 index up ~flat

Dollar edges up, gold dips; U.S. crude up >1%; bitcoin off ~0.8%

U.S. 10-year Treasury yield edges down to ~4.69%

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Earnings continue to be one of the market's biggest tailwinds.

In his latest “Brief” published Monday, Brian Belski, founder, CEO and chief investment officer at Humilis Investment Strategies, said first-quarter results were exceptional, with earnings growing 28.6%, well ahead of expectations.

At the end of the first quarter, Belski expected that momentum to carry into the second quarter and help drive stocks higher through the rest of the year. So far, that outlook appears to be playing out.

According to Belski, strong corporate fundamentals are one of the main reasons Humilis viewed bouts of market volatility this spring and summer as buying opportunities. While headlines have sparked periodic pullbacks, he argues that the underlying backdrop has remained supportive and reinforced his positive outlook on equities.

The strength has also been broad-based. With 88% of S&P 500 .SPX companies having reported at the time of his note, 86% topped earnings expectations. Even excluding the outsized contributions from Alphabet GOOGL.O and Amazon AMZN.O, which benefited from significant unrealized investment gains, blended S&P 500 earnings growth stood at 32%, according to Belski.