I opened my online brokerage account yesterday to see an endless stream of news briefs about Wall Street analyst cuts to earnings estimates for the first quarter earnings season that begins next week with earnings from JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Wells Fargo (WFC) on Tuesday morning before the New York open. The flood of estimate reductions has continued this morning.

For example, the analyst consensus dropped 9 cents a share to $0.48 a share for Wells Fargo. And fell 6 cents a share to $2.16 for JPMorgan Chase. And by 10.4 cents a share to $0.47 for Bank of America (BAC). And by 27 cents a share to a loss of $0.73 for Delta Airlines.

These are still relatively minor cuts to the Wall Street consensus. And they’re coming late considering the destruction being visited on the economy by the coronavirus recession.

Looking at the numbers, I’d have to say that Wall Street analysts have been very slow to cut estimates–which has created impression that after the selling from the February 19 peak, the forward projected market PE is lower than it is.

Here’s the difference between earnings estimates for the first quarter from Yardeni Research, an independent company with a long-term record of accuracy on earnings estimates, and the Wall Street analyst consensus. The figures from Yardeni Research are from April 6.

For the first quarter, Wall Street finally turned negative on March 18 with the consensus for first quarter earnings growth for the stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 dropping to a 0.02% year over year decline. As of April 6, Wall Street had become more negative and analysts were now looking for a drop of 7.3%.

Yardeni Research’s projection for first quarter earnings for the stocks in the S&P 500? A drop from the first quarter of 2019 of 23.4%.

Big difference, no? Enough to shock the market into another sell off during earnings season? Hard to tell since this market continues to think that bond buying programs from the Federal Reserve and hopes for an early–maybe May 1?–re-opening of the economy are enough to offset any current bad news.

The difference doesn’t get any smaller when you go out in 2020.

Second quarter Wall Street analyst consensus a drop in earnings of 12.9%. Yardeni Research a tumble of 51.6%

Third quarter Wall Street analysts consensus a 3.4% drop in earnings. Yardeni Research down 28.8%.

Fourth quarter Wall Street analyst consensus positive growth of 2.6%. Yardeni Research another 4.8% decline.

For the full 2020 year Wall Street analysts see just a 3.7% drop in earnings. Yardeni Research sees a 26.4% decline.

In 2021 both Wall Street analysts and Yardeni Research are looking for a big surge in earnings growth–16.1% according to Wall Street and 25% according to Yardeni.

But the surge in earnings growth would start from very different bases for S&P 500 earnings.

Wall Street analysts see an aggregate $182.20 in earnings per share for the S&P 500 stocks. Yardeni projects just $150 per share for the S&P 500 stocks.

That’s certainly enough to mark a difference between a market that is cheap or undervalued going into 2021 and one that is fully or maybe even overpriced.