CNBC, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, etc are all reporting that companies reported “better than expected” earnings this morning. Let’s take a look at these great earnings:

Coke – $8.27B in revenues vs estimates of $8.66B.   A $400MM MISS.

Caterpillar – $7.98B in revenues vs estimates of $8.86B.    Nearly a $1B MISS.

DuPont – $7B in revenues vs estimates of $7.15B.  A $150MM MISS.

United Technologies – $13.2B vs estimates of $13.92B.  A $700MM MISS.

I can’t ever remember a market where investors turned such a blind eye to top line growth.  It’s truly astonishing.  These are phenomenally bad revenue figures.  There is just no two ways around it.  This trend of rising stock prices on poor underlying earnings cannot and will not last.