CHART OF THE DAY: Earnings Season Is Off To An Ugly Start

Through Friday, 104 companies (33% of the market cap) of the S&P 500 have announced there Q1 2013 financial results.

While it's still very early into the earnings announcement season, the early tally is not very encouraging.

The analysts at Goldman Sachs have compared the earnings announcement surprises to the surprises seen in the last 40 quarters (10 years).

"Positive earnings surprises are tracking below average this quarter (36% vs. 47%)," said Goldman's David Kostin. "The percentage of firms missing earnings estimates by one standard deviation or more is also below the 40 quarter average (13% vs. 15%) implying more firms have reported results in- line with consensus expectations."

As you can see, there have only been two quarters in the past 40 quarters with a few percentage of companies beating estimates.