The 2,373 US Companies With Market Caps Above $300 Mil, With March Quarter Ends And Which Have Released Their March 2017 Quarterly Earnings By May 25, 2017 Generated March 2017 Quarter Total US GAAP Earnings of $260 Bil in the Trump Administration's First Quarter in Office, Up a Very Robust 37% From Their Total US GAAP Earnings of $190 Bil in the March 2016 Quarter, Driven By Off-the-Charts Oil & Gas Companies Earnings Improvement ........................................................................................ As a Comparison, the 2,467 US Companies With Market Caps Above $300 Mil and With December Quarter Ends Generated December 2016 Quarter Total US GAAP Earnings of $247 Bil in the Obama Administration's Last Quarter in Office, Up Surely a US Historic High 74% From Their Total US GAAP Earnings of $142 Bil in the December 2015 Quarter, Also Driven By Off-the-Charts Oil & Gas Companies Earnings Improvement

From a review of the very fine Google Finance Website, the excellent Zacks and Yahoo Earnings Calendar Websites and of company financial statements in the US SEC Website, I found the 2,373 Companies headquartered in the US with Stock Market Capitalizations at the end of 2016 or very early in 2017 of more than $300 Mil, which have March Quarter Ends and which have filed their March 2017 Quarter Financial Statements with the SEC by May 25, 2017.  Traditional Predominately Regulated Utilities were excluded.

US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP) are promulgated by the very prestigious US Accounting Profession and are considered the gold standard for best measuring economic performance of companies.

US Companies with March Quarter Ends comprise roughly 90% of all US Companies filing with the SEC.

Below here are the Total Reported US GAAP Earnings (Losses) From Continuing Operations for the Quarters Ended March 2017 and 2016 shown by Stock Market Capitalization Range for these 2,373 US Companies.  The Earnings of the individual Companies can be viewed in posts shown on the right hand side of the computer screen under Blog Archive.

		March	March
		2017	2016
		Quarter	Quarter
Company		US GAAP	US GAAP
Stock		Total	Total
Market		Net	Net
Cap	# of	Income	Income	Better	Better
Range	Companies	(Loss)	(Loss)	(Worse)	(Worse)
		$ mils	$ mils	$ mils	%
Above $10 Bil	367	217,052	175,916	41,136	23%
$1 Bil to $10 Bil	1,257	43,439	17,300	26,139	151%
$500 Mil to $1 Bil	456	(154)	(1,889)	1,734	NM
$300 Mil to $500 Mil	293	(185)	(1,579)	1,395	NM
Above $300 Mil	2,373	260,153	189,748	70,405	37%

And as a comparison, below here is the same information for the December 2016 and 2015 Quarters:

		December	December
		2016	2015
		Quarter	Quarter
Company		US GAAP	US GAAP
Stock		Total	Total
Market		Net	Net
Cap	# of	Income	Income	Better	Better
Range	Companies	(Loss)	(Loss)	(Worse)	(Worse)
		$ mils	$ mils	$ mils	%
Above $10 Bil	372	214,991	162,588	52,403	32%
$1 Bil to $10 Bil	1,325	32,921	(3,339)	36,260	1086%
$500 Mil to $1 Bil	470	(814)	(11,628)	10,814	NM
$300 Mil to $500 Mil	300	(360)	(5,732)	5,372	NM
Above $300 Mil	2,467	246,739	141,889	104,850	74%

So, why is it that these US Companies had their Total US GAAP Earnings Growth in President Obama's last quarter in office of 74% be precisely double that of 37% in President Trump's first quarter in office.

Predominately, it's attributable to the smaller of these US Companies.

US Companies in the $1 Bil to $10 Bil stock market cap range generated Total US GAAP Earnings Growth in the December 2016 Quarter of 1,086%, which was 7.2 times that of the 151% Total Earnings Growth in the March 2017 Quarter of 151%.

Also, US Companies in the $300 Mil to $1 Bil stock market cap range had their Total US GAAP Earnings Improve by $16.186 Bil in the December 2016 Quarter, which was 5.2 times that of their Total Earnings Improvement of $3.129 Bil in the March 2017 Quarter.