It doesn't matter if a company's forward-looking guidance is positive or not, the fact that it is willing to provide an outlook is good for the stock market, Jonathan Golub of RBC Capital Markets said Friday.
"Companies are going to be willing to provide guidance going forward. It doesn't mean they're going to say things are great, but a quarter or two ago they were saying [they] can't provide guidance because there's just too much uncertainty. Just by being willing to look forward, that's a positive," the firm's chief U.S. market strategist told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."
Earnings season kicks off Monday, with Alcoa scheduled to report quarterly results after the bell.
This season's outlook is grim, with earnings expected to post a 7.9 percent year-over-year decline, their worst since the second quarter of 2009, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Golub said estimates are so low because "at the beginning of the year, when the market was falling apart, analysts thought we were really heading into a recession and they slashed their numbers without looking at the economic data."
The S&P 500 began 2016 by declining about 11 percent, before posting a 12 percent gain.
S&P 500 year to date
"We've had a huge repositioning rally. We've had a massive short-covering rally predicated on a lot of fears. You had the Fed come out and give this dovish expectation and you had oil rally significantly on short covering because you had the talks about a freeze," David Seaburg, head of sales trading at Cowen, said Friday in another "Squawk on the Street" interview.
Even if earnings are a bit better, "we're probably at that level where things feel like the market's getting to the level where it can't go much higher," he said. "I don't see a lot more upside."
Oil prices surged Friday, with U.S. crude gaining more than 6 percent, threatening to break above $40 a barrel.
"They're trying one more time for the rumor that they might be able to get the production freeze going. That combined to swoop in and pick up the shorts one more time," Art Cashin, UBS director of floor operations at the NYSE, said on "Squawk on the Street."