Analyst upgrades:

• Wells Fargo upgraded Prudential (PRU) to outperform from market perform. The firm thinks the company is in a better position than its peers and will be able to more effectively exploit M&A opportunities.
• UBS upgraded Reliance Steel (RS) to buy from neutral based on potential growth through M&A and valuation. The firm raised its target to $50 from $49.
• Deutsche Bank upgraded Eastman Chemical (EMN) to buy from hold on expectations the company's portfolio transformation will drive higher normalized earnings power, which the firm believes is not fully reflected in consensus estimates. Deutsche raised its target price on shares to $70 from $62.
• Amylin Pharma (AMLN) was upgraded to overweight from equal weight at Barclays.
• Cephalon (CEPH) was upgraded to buy from hold at Jefferies.
• Acuity Brands (AYI) was upgraded to outperform from perform at Oppenheimer.

As expected, Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) is rolling along, which is why I'm Reiterating my Buy rating for the company, first recommended on March 27, 2009 at a price of $43.00. If you bought UNP in March, you're up 37%.

UNP posted Q3 EPS of $1.02, above Wall Street's 98 cents-$1.01 consensus estimate. Stronger pricing power played a role, and that bodes well for the quarters ahead.

A lot of earnings reports were issued last week. The market was busy sorting them all out. I'm going to take a fast look at several of the issuing companies.

American Express (NYSE: AXP): Don't leave home without it. Good advice for the card, perhaps, but what about the company? Should your portfolio leave home and forget this stock? I'd say so. It's not that American Express lost the earnings game. On the contrary, Bloomberg reported a beat. American Express earned 44 cents per share from continuing operations, adjusted. This was six pennies ahead of forecasts. Okay, I applaud such performance. And shares are way off the single-digit 52-week low. Thing is, I'm in love with another card business. Visa (NYSE: V). As I've stated before, I enjoy the beauty of Visa's lower-risk model. It doesn't have to put up with loan risk. Yes, the situation at American Express might be improving, but I'm not going to buy this one.

CSX (NYSE: CSX), a railway entity similar to companies such as Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (NYSE: BNI), Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE: NSC), and Union Pacific Corp. (NYSE: UNP), saw a nice bid during Tuesday's after-hours session. The market enjoyed CSX's Q3 earnings report so much it sent shares of the company higher by 2.6%.

What was so good about the data? According to TheStreet.com, CSX made 74 cents per share from continuing operations. The analyst community was counting on 71 cents per share. Perhaps more importantly, management seemed pretty upbeat on the state of the economy. Like a lot of other pundits, CEO Michael Ward thinks that the recession will eventually start to wane, and that we may have already experienced the bottom of the cycle.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says even stocks without exposure to that country will probably be on sale today.

If China has pulled back 20%, do we have to pull back 20%, even though they were up 80% and we are up 9%? Are we so in lock step now that when China catches a cold, we are the ones with pneumonia?

I don't think so. It's such an easy story to stretch out, though you can see that our Freeports (NYSE: FCX) (Cramer's Take) and our Exxons (NYSE: XOM) (Cramer's Take) can get hammered.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says if you wait for market conditions to reach perfection, you'll be waiting a long time.

You know what? I am going to wait until I am sure housing has turned before I buy the homebuilders like Lennar (NYSE: LEN) (Cramer's Take) and Pulte (NYSE: PHM) (Cramer's Take). I am going to wait until the foreclosures peak before I buy Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) (Cramer's Take).

I am going to wait until unemployment goes down before I buy 3M (NYSE: MMM) (Cramer's Take) and Disney (NYSE: DIS) (Cramer's Take) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) (Cramer's Take) and Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) (Cramer's Take).

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the plunge in China overnight is being blamed on the industrial metal, so expect some carry-over.

It turns out copper was the metric. Drats, I thought it was the dollar or oil. I thought we were supposed to buy the cyclicals on earnings being better than expected. I thought we might be buying the minerals and the steels and the oils off the morning proxy of the Baltic Freight Index, known as the Baltic Fright Index in the days when it kept going down, and kept us out of the Freeports (NYSE: FCX) (Cramer's Take) and Vales (NASDAQ: VALE) (Cramer's Take) and Union Pacifics (NYSE: UNP) (Cramer's Take) and U.S. Steels (NYSE: X) (Cramer's Take).

Silly me.

Did you manage to hitch your financial caboose to Union Pacific in late March? If you did you're up 32.5%.

True, the 'UNP Express' is leaving the station, so this represents perhaps you're last chance for an out-sized gain with UNP. Hence, I'm Reiterating my Buy rating for Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP), first recommended on March 27, 2009 at a price of $43.00.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says even without top-line growth, next quarter should amaze as we see the full benefits of big layoffs.

People are way too worried that we won't see top-line growth. The great earnings numbers that we have seen are being dismissed repeatedly because -- with the exception of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) (Cramer's Take) -- they aren't being driven by sales, just margins. I say if you are waiting for top line, forget it. Not in this rally. Not going to happen. Doesn't mean a thing.

Here's the deal. Companies have fired and fired and fired people again and again and we have only seen a few months -- the last two of this quarter -- of impact in the cuts while we have seen myriad charges. Next quarter, even if there is no top-line growth, should be amazing as we see the full benefits of the firings. We could be looking at gigantic earnings per share without any growth because no one is hiring. In fact, they are still laying off.

CSX (NYSE: CSX), a railway company whose peers include Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI), Union Pacific Corp. (NYSE: UNP) and Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE: NSC), reported earnings for the second quarter on Monday after the bell. Net sales declined 25%, and earnings from continuing operations declined 24% to 72 cents per share.

Declines are never nice, but for a company like CSX, it's only to be expected. The recession continues to have an impact on operations. Management said that volumes decreased; it also mentioned how CSX is doing its best to run as efficiently as possible to combat the dropping top line. Maybe it's working out, because according to Reuters, the company beat Wall Street estimates by 10 cents.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the rally here seems too strong for the news and data we're getting.

Just as when Doug Kass says, "Tell me something I don't know," I think this market knows something we don't know, either about a turn in commercial real estate to rival that of residential -- the real estate investment trusts are holding in well -- or a second stimulus plan, a real one that will put more people to work.

The employment numbers aren't good enough to merit this kind of rally, and we know the layoffs for June were preposterously high. We know that the auto build will be slightly better than expected a few months ago, but it's still pathetic and the auto idlings are about to start.

CSX (NYSE: CSX), a railway company whose colleagues include Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI), Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE: NSC) and Union Pacific Corp. (NYSE: UNP), issued its Q1 report on Tuesday after the bell. As one might imagine, there was a drop in both sales and net income. The top line declined by 17%. The bottom line, on an adjusted basis (taking into account an item from last year's similar quarter), dropped 23% to $0.62 per share.

The economy is still taking its toll, obviously. Volumes were down during the quarter. However, the market sometimes cares about only one thing: beating expectations. CSX actually beat the analyst expectations of $0.51 per share. This significant difference led traders to push shares of CSX higher by 6.5% during Tuesday's after-hours session.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says if the pricing shows a disconnect with long-term truths, you can buy here.

Nothing to say. Not much going on. Can't get any CEOs to comment. Too close to the end of the quarter. People are dismissive of Nucor (NYSE: NUE) (Cramer's Take), and happy with Darden (NYSE: DRI) (Cramer's Take). Meanwhile, Tim Geithner's been silent, and silence is golden. Now if only he would ask one simple question: What are we guaranteeing with AIG (NYSE: AIG) (Cramer's Take)? It's a sideshow but an important one down the road, not now.

All of these things are of a piece. We are in one of those golden moments when not much is happening, and when we get information, we declare it half-full. I found myself thinking that Nucor's decline has to be some sort of a bottom because utilization rates don't get much lower than this. I found myself thinking that the infrastructure plan will kick in because everyone has now decided it will and that's all that matters.

I think it's fair to say that there's much trepidation about the earnings season that picks up steam this week. And for better or worse, numbers from the big financials have begun to roll in. Last week we saw profit sink for JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and significant losses from Bank of American Corp. (NYSE: BAC), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), and Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB).

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (NYSE: BK) to be among those financials reporting fourth-quarter earnings growth this week. They anticipate that Bank of New York will post a profit of $0.70 per share, compared to $0.67 per share a year ago and $0.72 in the previous quarter. Revenue is expected come to $3.8 billion, about the same as it was a year ago. Bank of New York has fallen short of earnings estimates in two of the past five quarters, by as much as 11.1%. For the full year, analysts are looking for $2.78 per share (+5.8%) on $14.8 billion (+4.2%). The consensus recommendation of analysts is to buy BK, and the long-term EPS growth rate forecast is 10.7%. Shares are 48.7% lower than a year ago. Other financials expected to report quarterly earnings growth this week include SunTrust Banks Inc. (NYSE: STI) and M&T Bank Corp. (NYSE: MTB).

CSX (NYSE: CSX), a transportation company whose competitors include Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI), Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE: NSC), and Union Pacific Corp. (NYSE: UNP), reported earnings for the third quarter on Tuesday. The results weren't bad, driven in part by a drop in energy costs and an effort to keep costs under control.

Revenues increased 18%, approaching $3 billion. Earnings per share from continuing operations skyrocketed 40% to $0.94. As management pointed out, distributors are exploiting railways to the advantage of their supply chains. This is cool for shareholders of CSX, who obviously are hoping their company can successfully navigate the tough economic landscape that we're all trying to find maps for. And if oil prices continue to fall, then CSX may find it easier to manage its operations.

And there's another positive. According to this source, CSX beat analyst expectations by a penny. Unfortunately, according to that same source, management believes that it will hit the lower end of the spectrum in terms of its previous guidance. CSX is looking to earn between $3.65 and $3.75 per share for the fiscal year.

Taking everything together, I'm not sure I'd want to enter CSX at this time. It is well off the 52-week high, but it's not exactly near the 52-week low, either. Even though the energy picture might be moderating for the company, and even though its business does offer a compelling transportation service, I think a macro slowdown might send shares back toward the low. And according to this source, freight volume declined by over 2%. Problems in the automotive industry are negatively affecting CSX. Heck, problems in many industries will be with us for a while. CSX will see its operations pressured. And, again, that tells me that I'd have to see a big drop in the stock to find it attractive at this point.

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.