a thought: Amazon success, like Walmart success, suggests reduced market share for brick and mortar retail stores who need to pay rent in expensive shopping districts.
also check the article i posted to gdl. just one of many rumblings that this earnings season might not be as rosy overall as it is for a few individual stocks.
for SPY traders, the key is how many S&P 500 companies are winning vs losing and the relative weighing of the winners in the index.
fwiw, here's a some more reading to consider:
http://www.trpropresearch.com/pdf/This_Week_In_Earnings.pdf/ July 17, 2015 upside: Of the 60 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings to date for Q2 2015, 72% have reported earnings above analyst expectations. This is above the long-term average of 63% and above the average over the past four quarters of 69%. downside: Second quarter earnings are expected to decline 1.7% from Q2 2014. 50% of companies have reported Q2 2015 revenue above analyst expectations. This is below the long- term average of 60% and is below the average over the past four quarters of 56%. For Q2 2015, there have been 98 negative EPS preannouncements issued by S&P 500 corporations compared to 25 positive EPS preannouncements. By dividing 98 by 25, one arrives at an N/P ratio of 3.9 for the S&P 500 Index.