The advantage of the “forward earnings curve” for the SP 500 is that it fills in the interim periods between calendar year EPS, and provides some concrete – albeit constantly changing – earnings data between the calendar years.
Starting from right to left on the above spreadsheet, the SP 500 EPS dollar estimates between calendar 2020 and calendar 2021, readers can see the change in the dollar estimates as well as the sequential rate of change. The reason the non-calendar year dollar estimates are missing from the spreadsheet is that IBES data by Refinitiv doesn’t