I started working in a dealing room in 1984, so have been involved in financial markets for nearly thirty-five years. In that time, I have seen crazy booms and some spectacular busts. I have lived and traded through a period of irrational exuberance, a tech wreck, an internet revolution, and the Great Recession.

I have never seen an earnings season quite like that which starts this week.

The size of this market decline, the S&P 500 dropped thirty-five percent from high to low, was not the largest I have witnessed or traded through. From the high in October of 2007 to the low early in 2009 the index lost much more, fifty-seven percent in total. That, however, was over a seventeen-month period. The high and low of this move were one month apart.

This is not as bad numerically as 2007-2008, but in some ways feels much worse. Frequent record one-day declines and breathless 24/7 reporting of the stock market in the mainstream media contributed to that, but there was also uncertainty about what an almost complete shutdown of the economy meant for stocks. That has never happened before, and nobody knows how long it will last or what long-term damage will be done.

Over the next few weeks, starting tomorrow, we will get some idea.

I would love to say that I knew what the impact of that news would be, but sometimes it is important for traders and investors to acknowledge that we don’t, and can’t, know what is coming. How can we even assess which of two extremes is more likely?

When that is the case, pretending you do know be a dangerous game. It could be that three weeks from now we will be looking back and thinking that we, in market terms, had overreacted massively. Unlike other things that have caused stock market crashes, the economic shutdown was a deliberately made, policy-led problem. It will go away when the virus is defeated and the policy is changed … or will it?

There will be a relief rally when the economy re-opens, for sure. After all, the Dow saw a record week last week on just a few hints that maybe things were getting worse at a slower rate. “Not as bad as it could have been” is rarely a good reason for strength in a single stock, nor is it a particularly logical reason for a nearly fourteen percent one week jump in an index, but that is what happened last week.

This week, one way or another, we will learn which of those emotions, fear or hope, were more realistic from a market perspective.

There is no doubt that the “world is ending” mentality of two weeks ago was overdone — after all, this too shall pass. But is it realistic to rally so strongly and so quickly before we know what, if any, long-term effects there will be?

The national psyche, corporate and individual, will be changed, for one thing.

My Mom, who lived in London during the blitz in WWII, has said that in some ways this reminds her of then; people accepting shared responsibility for not making things worse, while pulling together for the common good. That adjustment to the national psyche in Britain led to the NHS and the welfare state shortly after the end of the war. Could it be that a similar shift to prioritize community over individuals and corporations will happen in the U.S.? Even a small change in those priorities could have long-lasting effects on the market.

There will be other changes too. Even those who continued to maintain that there was no substitute for shopping in person have been buying online, for example. And I am sure a lot of corporations are rethinking the value of large corporate offices and extensive, expensive travel. Growth and expansion plans will be shelved and, in some cases, may never be reinstated.

Will cruise line, hotel and airline revenues bounce back?

Even after those questions are answered, there will be long-term effects that we just cannot anticipate right now.

As companies report Q1 results over the next few weeks though, we may have a better idea. What changes are they making? Are they easily reversible or intended to stay in effect? When Q1 earnings start to come in, those are the things that investors should be focused on. The usually important metrics — EPS and revenue — will mean virtually nothing. Earnings and sales will be bad; that is one of the few things that is certain. How bad though, is just about irrelevant.

So, this earnings season, understand that a lack of certainty about the future is inevitable at the moment. To get a better idea of what is to come, listen to what companies say in their earnings reports. Not what they say about the quarter just ended, but what they say about the changes they have made, and if they anticipate those lasting beyond the time when the virus is defeated.