One way to guard against such low P/E traps is to go for stocks priced reasonably relative to robust analyst forecasts on long-term profit growth.
The return to economic growth was slightly less robust than analysts had forecast because corporate capital spending dropped 3.2percentt compared with the last quarter of 2001.
Sales rates in the mid-16 million range are considered robust, and analysts at Ford and G.M. said they saw encouraging economic signs in the results.
Any quick recovery is not shaping up to be robust, many analysts say, and history indicates that companies often continue to cut costs until they are confident a downturn has ended.
Treasury prices slid yesterday after an inflation measure closely watched by Federal Reserve policy makers proved more robust than analysts had envisioned, leading to a sell-off that later took on a life of its own.
Revenue in the period, which ended Jan . 31and was the first quarter of Hewlett's fiscal year, rose 4 percent, to $32.30 billion from $31.18 billion, but growth was not as robust as analysts expected.
Nearly every major chain turned in robust figures, beating analysts' expectations and recording the sixth consecutive monthly sales increase.
Hewlett-Packard is the second-largest computer company, after I.B.M., and her modest expectations suggested that the recovery in technology spending might be less robust than many analysts expect.
Still, the extent of the price decreases, and the oversupply of products causing them, suggest that the economic recovery is unlikely to be a robust one, many analysts say.
In fact, executives in Dearborn seem chagrined that someone in Ford's European office blabbed the good news about Focus' robust sales to analysts.
