After years of covering quarterly earnings seasons, I am heartily sick of them. The expectations game, as companies talk down their prospects as the earnings announcement approaches, only to spring a “surprise” by beating the lower bar they set for themselves, is an annoying, phoney ritual. Companies frequently sucker those of us in the press into giving them good coverage and sucker investors into buying their shares.

As the process is so predictable, we now have the Lewis Carroll-esque logical impossibility that investors expect to be surprised. Whatever the consensus earnings forecasts for year-on-year growth are, expect a surprise and add on another three percentage points or so.

I am delighted to say, therefore, that this time is different. Far from fall as results for the first quarter of 2018 approach, earnings forecasts for the US S&P 500 companies have shot up.