The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday edition that this upcoming earnings season is going to be interesting, especially given the rising gap between share price performance and the underlying fundamentals. Post columnist Martin Pelletier writes that the median global stock trades at 15.2 times forward earnings, while it is at 18.6 times on a non-equal-weighted basis. This implies a modest forward real return of 6.6 per cent. The S&P 500 Index is up 25.2 per cent from June, 2023, to June, 2024, and its constituents are expected to report year-over-year earnings growth of only 8.8 per cent for the second quarter -- down from 9.1-per-cent earnings growth expectation at the end of March. In Toronto, 118 of the 226 companies (52 per cent) on the S&P/TSX Composite Index are beating the index this year compared with only 25 per cent in the United States. High interest rates have hit certain segments quite hard, including the Canadian banks, utilities and telcos, even though rates will be coming down faster here than in the U.S. Telcos Rogers, Telus and BCE have been hammered, selling down 13.3 per cent, 14.2 per cent and 20.7 per cent, respectively. Look for reduced debt-servicing costs to boost earnings.