This Could Be The Most Important Earnings Season Of The Bull Market

The bull market is in its sixth year and the S&P 500 is near its all-time high.

For Wall Street's stock market strategists, Q2 earnings season will be huge.

"Market participants will be looking for further improvements in revenues and earnings growth that along with financial engineering in the form of share buybacks have helped move the market higher through the recovery since 2009," said Oppenheimer's John Stoltzfus earlier this week. "Guidance as to what corporate leadership sees ahead will likely carry increasing weight."

According to Reuters, Wall Street is looking for 6.2% year-over-year growth in S&P 500 earnings per share. Growth is also expected to accelerate to a double-digit pace by the second half of the year.

It's worth noting that valuations have become increasingly rich. Currently, the S&P 500 is trading at around 15.7 times forward earnings, which is well above 5-year and 10-year averages.

One way for those valuations to improve is by seeing earnings actually beat expectations.

We'll see.

Earnings season kicks off with aluminum giant Alcoa after today's closing bell.