Earnings season doesn't get under way until next week, but one thing is clear already: The third quarter wasn't good.

Analysts estimate that companies in the S&P 500 earned 2.1% less in the third quarter than they did a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters. That would mark the first time earnings contracted - at least the way Thomson Reuters tallies things up - since the third quarter of 2009, when the economy was just nosing itself out of recession. The 3.1% earnings growth that analysts forecast at the outset of the quarter now looks rather optimistic.