Corporate America's incredibly profitable pandemic

Companies are about to blast out a blizzard of quarterly profit and sales numbers over the next few weeks, as the carnival of Q4 corporate results kicks off.

Driving the news: Large banks will open the floodgates, issuing reports early Friday that mark the unofficial start of earnings season on Wall Street.

Why it matters: Earnings reports tell investors, analysts and economists how the economy translates into sales and profits for corporations. They also make stocks move — sometimes a lot.

The big picture: So far, corporate America has had a very good pandemic.

Though profits initially took a hit in 2020, they rebounded to what was almost certainly record highs last year. (We won't know for sure until the new batch of numbers, which cover the last three months of 2021, are in.)