S&P 500 companies are delivering a much stronger-than-expected second-quarter earnings season, with blended earnings growth of 50.4% after about 88% of index members reported and roughly 86% of reporting companies beating forecasts, according to figures cited from The Kobeissi Letter and FactSet. Aggregate EPS beats were put at 29.2%, versus a five-year average of 7.0%, leaving the index on pace for a seventh straight quarter of double-digit profit growth and its strongest expansion since the stimulus-fueled rebound in 2021. FactSet analyst John Butters said Alphabet and Amazon accounted for about 71% of the dollar increase in blended earnings since July; excluding them would cut the growth rate to 32.0% from 50.4%. The concentration reflects strong AI-related cloud demand: Alphabet reported $119.80 billion in revenue with Google Cloud growth accelerating 82%, while Amazon reported $200.61 billion in revenue and AWS growth of 36.7%, with CEO Andy Jassy saying its AI and chip businesses each topped a $25 billion annualized revenue run rate.