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The First Quarter of 2015 is now in the books, which means that we are about to kick off another earnings season this week.  Alcoa, the first of the S&P500 stocks to report -- a pride of place owing to its AA ticker -- does so on Wednesday after the bell.  While it will take a couple weeks before we get into the thick of it, when large cap tech, big banks and the mega-conglomerates start reporting, anticipation for this coming season is much higher than is typical.  

The strong dollar cutting into corporate profits, the low price of oil boosting transports but hurting energies, nasty winter weather putting a crimp in hiring and expansion, and turmoil in the Eurozone and Middle East, are some of the various bricks in this year's "wall of worry" that may affect this season's earnings announcements. 

Christine Short of Estimize says these headwinds could make for a rough set of reports. Her firm is looking for -1.1% growth on the S&P 500 and -1% in revenues. Let me underscore that those are negative numbers.  If Short's estimates became reality, this would shape up to be the worst earnings season in more than five years.

“You’re going to see almost every company mention the stronger dollar. We’ve only had 18 companies report up to this point, but almost everyone from Adobe (ADBE) to Nike (NKE) to Oracle (ORCL) – everyone’s mentioning the stronger dollar,” Short says.

But wait.  It gets worse!  On New Year’s Eve of 2014, forward earnings expectations underlying the Standard & Poor’s 500 index were pegged to rise 4.2% during the first quarter versus a year earlier, according to FactSet data. Now that same group is projecting a fall of -4.6% in estimates!. This would mark the first decline in forward estimates since 2012.  All 10 S&P sectors have seen estimates slide, but nothing is as bad as the energy sector.  Due to the continued slide in oil prices, first-quarter earnings estimates are expected to plummet a whopping -64%.  Ouch!

According to Short, it's not just lower oil and a strong dollar that companies have had to worry about this quarter.  We have also recently seen a series of mixed economic reports that could further drag earnings lower. Here is what Short had to say:

Our latest reading on consumer sentiment was a little lower. Consumer confidence, however, another indicator was high. Retail sales we saw in the latest reading were down, however, some of the housing indicators have been very good, so it depends on what pocket you’re looking at. Some of the larger ticket items which were slow for a while, we’re starting to see autos and housing pick up in some of the readings and we’ve already accounted for the first quarter so you’re not going to see the latest data necessarily reflected there, but going forward some of these indicators are going to have to get a bit stronger, especially on the consumer front.

Then there was that truly stinky jobs number that came out last Friday which, at the very least, gives consumers and economists pause until next month.  All told, current economic conditions create a rather messy and uncertain situation going forward that could impact both Q1 earnings and future guidance to boot.  And if there is anything investors do NOT like, it is future uncertainty.