While CAT's CEO puts on a brave face, the results from his company are clearly indicative of the slowing global growth that everyone (apart from nominal equity indices) knows is occurring. For months, talking heads have used CAT's results as a proxy for growth and as they are rising confirming their inherent BTFD biases; however, this month's terrible results - with Asia/Pac down 12% on a 3-month rolling basis and North America down 11% - appears to confirm what has been evident in the lagging global GDP data for over a year - things are not picking up.
CAT Results...
[2]
Confirming the slowing Global GDP (that stocks seems so adamant to ignore)...
[3]
for now...
Charts: CAT and Bloomberg