Authored by Jesse Felder via The Felder Report,

About five months ago, after the stock market started to correct last fall, I suggested in a blog post the weakness might be due to the fact that it was increasingly looking like there might be an earnings recession on the horizon. Stocks rallied from that point but breadth continued to deteriorate, insider selling surged and the monetary tailwind began to abate.

At the same time, interest rates, oil prices and the dollar have all continued their individual uptrends, putting even greater pressure on both end demand for products and services and the profit margins corporations can earn on them. As such, the probability of an earnings recession, possibly a very significant one, has only grown over the past few months. Small businesses are already signaling as much.