Here in Richmond, Virginia, the thermometer has been hovering around 90 degree readings, afternoon thunderstorms are more and more prevalent, the kids spend the day hanging out at the their local pool, and the last of the July 4th leftovers are out of the fridge.  In short, this means we are full-force into the summer season.  As well, it means that the second quarter has come to a close, and therefore another season is upon us -- that of earnings.  As you know, we are faced with this event four times a year -- and the time is upon us for the third time in 2011 as we approach the middle of July.

The second half of this month and into the first part of August represents the heart of earnings season, with the majority of companies due to release their earnings reports for the 2nd quarter of 2011.  As has become tradition, Alcoa (AA) kicked things off last week, along with Google (GOOG), and to this point we have had a minimal number of the S&P 500 companies reporting.  This means that there are plenty of companies still due to report their earnings over the course of the next few weeks, and this always tends to makes things interesting.

Below we have selected a number of better-known companies with material weightings in various ETFs that are scheduled to release their earnings in the next several days.  We have all witnessed the effects that earnings reports can have on the stock price of any given company, which can overflow into the ETFs which they underlie.  By consulting the table below, we can clearly see that some of these ETFs have more significant weightings than others, which means that they have the potential of being impacted by the results of earnings more than others.  For instance, the Industrial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLI) has more than a combined weighting of 20% in United Technologies, Caterpillar, and General Electric.  So it won't be unusual for the stocks and ETF to be volatile over the next few days.  Another example of an ETF that has a material weighting in one of the stocks is the Vanguard Telecommunication Services (VOX).  It has a 22% weighting in AT&T, which could also be impacted whether good or bad.