The real earnings story behind 10 bellwether stocks

bellwether stocks Although the headlines are screaming about how companies are beating their earnings estimates, little newsprint is being devoted to this quarter's real story.

That story is that revenues for many corporations are way down year over year, and more importantly, their top-line revenues are often coming in below Street estimates.

To be certain, there have been some real success stories so far in Q2, and we'll be talking about some of those in a moment. Moreover, it is always a good sign when companies beat their earnings estimates.

But not all earnings are created equal.

If a company blows through its earnings forecast on strong revenue, it's a much more bullish sign than if a company beats its bottom line estimates by cutting costs and reducing expenses. Yes, the bottom line may be stronger than Wall Street analysts predicted, but how the company got there may not auger well for its future growth.

Here are 10 bellwether stocks that have reported earnings recently. All have beaten bottom line expectations, but most have failed to beat both bottom-line and top-line projections.

Click on each stock to learn more:

Stock #1: Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)
Stock #2: Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT)
Stock #3: Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO)
Stock #4: DuPont (NYSE: DD)
Stock #5: Ford (NYSE: F)
Stock #6: Intel (NASDAQ: INTC)
Stock #7: McDonald's (NYSE: MCD)
Stock #8: Merck (NYSE: MRK)
Stock #9: United Technologies (NYSE: UTX)
Stock #10: Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO)