The Coming Flood of Quarterly Earnings Reports

The first earnings reports for the third quarter of 2008 were issued this week, and a flood of reports from other companies is nearly upon us.

Well-known companies scheduled to report earnings during the week of 13 October include Abbot Labs (NYSE: ABT), AMR (NYSE: AMR), Citigroup (NYSE: C), Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), Johnson and Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), PepsiCo, (NYSE: PEP), and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC).

We previously posted third-quarter "look-aheads" for Intel, Nokia, and PepsiCo.  When the actual earnings are released, we will compare each Income Statement with our baseline and update the respective GCFR gauges.

Perhaps earning reports, even they reflect the now-obvious softness in the economy, will give market participants a more rationale basis for decision making than the raw fear that has been so evident recently.

Unfortunately, Alcoa (NYSE: AA), which led off the earnings parade, reported disappointing results.  Demand from manufacturers for aluminum, which is correlated with overall industrial growth, is down sharply.  Alcoa characterized economic conditions as "very adverse."