The next earnings season gets rolling in just a couple of days, and it’s a big one. For decades, Alcoa (AA) was the unofficial leadoff hitter of each quarterly reporting season, but that company changed its schedule a year ago and now the financials are first up. Healthy financials are a must for a healthy market, so let’s take a look at what to expect and where the biggest profit potential is. (Hint: It’s not where Wall Street is looking.) If you follow the financial news at all, you know there’s an obsession with interest rates. As interest they increase, banks make more money on what they lend, which in turn boosts the bottom line.

There are several different ways to value a company, but not everyone always agrees on the same one. That’s what leads to day-to-day volatility. Some analysts will consider a stock a great value while others will think it’s overvalued. It’s not always easy to be on the right side of the investment, and for a company like Qualcomm (QCOM) it’s even more difficult. QCOM is a world leader in the next generation of mobile technologies, and it’s been in the headlines recently as a result of Broadcom’s (AVGO) failed takeover attempt of it. Also clouding its potential valuation is its recent purchase of NXP Semiconductor (NXPI).