Lots of quarterly reports to come this week, and if you're one of those looking to earnings for signs of the direction of the markets or of the economy, well its going to be a rough week. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, by and large, expect earnings declines to be deeper and more numerous than earnings gains. And that's true across sectors: Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), U.S. Steel Corp. (NYSE: X), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT), Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX), Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA), Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (NYSE: HOT), American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP), Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO), and Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN) are all expected to post double-digit declines this week.

Even the petroleum industry is not immune, with Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX), Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO), ExxonMobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM), Murphy Oil Corp. (NYSE: MUR), ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), Occidental Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: OXY), and Hess Corp. (NYSE: HES) expected to report profits that were as much as 65.3% lower in the fourth quarter.

And analysts expect Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (NYSE: FCX), Tyson Foods Inc. (NYSE: TSN), DuPont (NYSE: DD), and Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) to have swung to losses for the most recent quarter, from profits in the same period a year ago. And Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) is expect to have deepened its net loss.

But not all is doom and gloom. There are some anticipated EPS gainers as well. Here's a closer look at a few of them.

General Electric (GE) ended the day up 24 cents and 0.70 percent at $34.67. Barron's list of respected companies based on capitalization no doubt was responsible for some of the love GE had on the market today. GE scored as one of the top five on that list, right next to Proctor and Gamble and Berkshire Hathaway.

NBC/Universal also launched online video syndication, using AOL to help it bring Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Twenty Good Years to web audiences. Will this build audience for those shows on the cable side of things? Time will tell.

Almost 60 days have passed since I posted Scary market -- any safe stocks? and Still scary market -- more SAFE HAVENS.

Interestingly five of these eight companies made the top 20 (actually top 17) on Barron's list of most repected companies based on capitalzation in the current issue of Barron's (subscription required). The other three are not large enough to make the poll. Even more interesting GE, PG & BRK are three of the top five. Is it possible these Wall Street money managers have been reading my stories?... Naw -- and I certainly have not been talking to them.

Thirty days have passed since I posted Scary market -- any safe stocks? and almost 30 days since Still scary market -- more SAFE HAVENS.

Thirty days is really of no consequence in testing the validity of my comments or these companies. However, I was curious about how they were tracking and I think I should be as accountable as anyone else and more than most since I have been writing for the BloggingStocks site. Since posting the share prices six have moved up and two have gone down. I have not changed my mind about any of these companies or their stocks during this period. I had a good-til-cancelled order for some WM, which filled, taking advantage of the drop. We are also seriously looking at acquiring some more UPS, which is down significantly, to our original purchase price, eliminating all of our profit. They are listed in the order I mentioned them in my earlier posts.

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) closed Friday at $3,102 up from $2,995.

Washington Mutual (WM) closed Friday at $42.75 down from $45.50.