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10B Daily News – Saturday, April 7, 2012 Furniture Depot 235 So. Main St., Red Bluff 527-1657 SAT. 9:00-5:00 • SUN. 11:00-5:00 MON.-FRI. 9:00-6:00 *"no sales tax" in reference to discount given equal to the amount of calculated sales tax. By CHRISTINA REXRODE was a triumphant first quar- ter. But for earnings growth, the past three months were just ho-hum. AP Business Writer For the stock market, it least 10 percent for all but the most recent period, when it was 6 percent. The reasons for the Analysts are expecting earnings for companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index to decline 0.1 percent compared to a year ago, according to FactSet. It's a tiny number but a signifi- cant turning point. Earnings growth was on a winning streak for the previous nine quarters. Year-over-year earnings growth has been at expected slowdown range from global (a weak Europe hurts everybody) to mathe- matical (it's hard to top dou- ble-digit quarters). Whatev- er the cause, the stagnation in earnings growth is a stark reminder that the econo- my's problems are far from solved. Just three months ago, analysts were predict- ing 3 percent earnings growth for the first quarter. We'll soon see if the 16,000 print distribution Full insert to The Daily News, Direct mailed to non- subscribing households, distribution through hotels, restaurants and visitor information centers through fall, 2012. expectations are on target. Earnings season gets under way Tuesday when the alu- minum producer Alcoa becomes the first major U.S. company to release its first-quarter results. Should this batch of earnings contain a lot of bad surprises, it could upend a stock market rally that pushed the S&P 500 index up 12 percent in the first three months of the year. Here's what you need to know: that bad? —Are earnings really It depends on how you look at it. People are blam- ing the slowdown on sever- al factors including higher oil prices and Europe's debt crisis. Those are legitimate concerns. High prices for oil and gas make it more expensive for companies to ship their products and leave people with less money to spend on other things. Europe's debt crisis means that the U.S. can't sell as many products there. It also hurts fast-growing economies like China and India that export to Europe. That, in turn, affects U.S. companies that count on growth in emerging markets to boost their own sales. Keep in mind that this deceleration follows an SALE throughout the store First-quarter earnings could derail market's climb Wall Street extended period of big gains. Earnings surged 19 percent in the first quarter of 2011, and that was on top of 53 percent growth the year before as companies bounced back from a dismal first quarter of 2009. Aggre- gate earnings of companies in the S&P 500 were $96 per share last year, a record, according to FactSet senior earnings analyst John But- ters. Investors realize that companies can't sustain warp speed indefinitely. ''It's supposed to be a results, chances are they've already been baked into the stock price and won't have much of an immediate effect unless there's a big surprise. A company's pre- dictions about the future are what investors really listen to. ''A lot of what we're going to get now,'' Butters says, ''is already in the rear- view mirror.'' very weak quarter,'' says Sam Stovall, chief equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ, ''but Wall Street is not freaking out because they understand why.'' —Does the market care about earnings? Sure, to an extent. More often than not, a company's stock moves in the same direction as its earnings. Investors tend to trade on what they expect to happen in the coming months. By the time a company actually announces its quarterly Butters also notes the outsized impact of Apple's earnings on the overall fig- ure for the S&P 500. Strip out Apple, Butters says, and the prediction for the first quarter falls from minus 0.1 percent to minus 1.6 per- cent. Besides, one quarter of earnings growth hardly means a company is solid. Earnings can be a deceptive measurement, and will rise even when revenue falls if a company slashes jobs and other expenses. Share buy- backs and accounting charges can also inflate profits and mask a compa- ny's struggles. Advertising Deadline: Friday, May 4