This morning, Caterpillar slashed its 2012 forecast for the second time this year as it warned the global economy was slowing faster than it had expected. This announcement comes on the heels of last week’s disappointing earnings from the likes of Microsoft, Google and McDonalds. While many Wall Street analysts have lowered expectations for earnings this quarter, the fact that these big conglomerates are lowering their forecasts for the future is quite disheartening. We have talked before about earnings reaching their peak earlier this year and unfortunately this is coming to fruition. Our take for some time has been that the market was ahead of itself, and Friday’s pullback put this in the spotlight. We still see the market trading in a bit of a range as cautious investors are watching how the rest of this year will unfold. With all the headwinds of the election as well as the impending fiscal cliff, the road could get a bit bumpy from here.
