International shipper FedEx (FDX) will get its chance to impress Wall Street tomorrow when it reports its fiscal first quarter results.

Headed into tomorrow's report, analysts are expecting to see earnings of $1.21 per share. During the same period last year the company had earnings of $0.58.

Abbey Joseph Cohen, chief market strategist at Goldman Sachs (GS), says that U.S. stocks have room to run on the upside. She spoke on CNBC Tuesday and reiterated this important fact: "The stock market is almost always a discounting mechanism that almost always moves in advance of the economy, but we don't think it has moved too far at this point."

This bit of wisdom should be posted at the top of every trader and investor's computer screen. Many investors have a tendency to look back at what happened, rather than looking forward to what will be. The past is dead. Today's trading is done. Now you must move on to tomorrow, to the unknown.

What happens when a bank has to accept the collateral posted for loans? Well, in Russia, it's like the punchline to a bad Yakov Smirnoff joke. "In Russia, when a bank takes collateral, it has to set up a pigpen!"

Well, this is exactly what happened to Alexander Lebedev's OAO National Reserve Bank. It wound up with 40,450 of them. As Russian banks are coping with the financial crisis, they are finding themselves with a variety of hard goods that they never expected to receive.

The stock market is on a tear. The S&P 500 index has had its best five months since 1938, with a 46% gain from its March 12 low. On Friday the S&P 500 closed at 987.48, so we have only 12.52 points to go. Volume has not been that impressive on the up side.

Now we must ask ourselves: How did the experts come up with the ammunition to predict the 1000 level? With the glass half full they are saying that 74% of the companies reporting second quarter results beat Wall Street expectations. This data comes from Thomson Reuters analysts. What is hidden in this report is that while earnings beat expectations, most are below last year's numbers.

If you are sitting in your office or at home thinking: "What am I going to do next? The economy is getting worse by the day," you are not alone. For the first time in a generation real fear has gripped the nation. This was reflected in the action of the markets since the beginning of the month.

Global markets are at multiyear lows, as is the U.S. Dow Jones Industrial average. The S&P index sank below the psychological 800 level.

This past week, attention was focused on central and eastern Europe, where the recession is gaining momentum on the downside. Now add to this mix the banking crisis. Investors are fearing a lack of solvency among the big international banks. Credit default swaps are rising, with Korea hitting a three-month high. Then you have the crisis in Japan, where GDP is falling by an annualized rate of 12.7% in the past three months.

If the number of large capitalization stocks is dropping due to a falling stock market, what can be done? Change the definition of "large cap." That is exactly what S&P is doing.

According to MarketWatch, "For large-cap stocks, reflected by the S&P 500, the value was cut to $3 billion from $4 billion. The S&P set the $4 billion mark on September 25." That makes for two revisions in three months. If the market keeps falling, perhaps that number could drop to $2 billion.

Why move the goal posts? Perhaps because some S&P indexes are based on the definition of large cap. Perhaps it makes people who invest in large cap stocks feel better.

Changing the definition may actually hurt some investors. There are still plenty of companies that have market caps above $4 billion or even $5 billion. There is a sense that the stocks in these firms are "safer" than other equities. A company that has been dragged below the $3 billion threshold may be a company with a stock that has dropped faster than the market in general or it may be a company that has a falling cash balance. A firm with $1 billion of cash on its balance sheet is more likely to have a market cap of over $3 billion than a company that has $200 million. Being a large cap stock actually means something, even if it is only by having balance sheet that is likely to be healthier than many others.

The S&P action will probably confuse some investors in an already confusing market. What is a large cap stock? Whatever S&P says it is.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

Now that the SEC has had some time to sift though all the evidence of why credit rating agencies were so wrong in their view of mortgage-backed securities, the most disturbing finding is that S&P analysts thought their own conclusions about risk were often wrong.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), an S&P analytical staffer emailed another that a mortgage or structured-finance deal was "ridiculous" and that "we should not be rating it."

What should the government do now that it has the goods? It could fine S&P, and probably will. The fine could never be large enough to match the hundreds of billions of dollars lost by financial firms that put money into the securities. The SEC could bring charges against some of the analysts. As it is, some of them will probably lose their jobs.

The most sensible solution would be to bar S&P from rating derivatives at all. Would that leave a hole in the market? Probably. Other credit agencies might have been involved in similar misdeeds. That would mean they would have to exit the business as well.

The net effect of moving credit ratings out of the business of covering derivatives would almost certainly mean a huge drop-off in the market for the instruments. That might not be such a bad thing.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.