Like glitter in the prospector's pan, last week's earnings reports had some sparkle. But don't be blinded by the light.

Consumer bellwethers showed resilience: Coca-Cola (profits up 15 percent) and Johnson & Johnson (up 12.5 percent) were strong, while General Motors more than doubled earnings and Ford returned to profitability after four losing quarters. Regional banks generally were strong, and Boeing beat expectations.

But winners had a soft underbelly. Coke warned of weakness abroad. Banks profited mainly from money migration into safe but low-interest accounts, hardly a vote of investor confidence. General Motors was clouded by pension liabilities, and Ford said it expects to lose money in the third quarter. Boeing's better-than-expected numbers still included a 7 percent drop in profits from the previous year's quarter amid softness in the airline industry. And J&J dipped late in the week, after confirming reports that one of its factories was being investigated for allegedly falsifying records.

Then there was Microsoft. Sales were up 10 percent over the previous year but were flat from the prior quarter, and the software giant reduced its outlook for the next 12 months. The news from Seattle reinforced the view that technology, the market driver through the late 1990s bubble, remains distressed. Dell raised its second-quarter forecast (it reports August 15), but its gains have come largely at the expense of weakened competitors. IBM topped downwardly revised forecasts by a penny, but sales fell 7 percent. Intel missed earnings by a penny per share and said it would lay off 4,000 workers, mostly through attrition.

Overdone. Some clarity may emerge on August 14, when management for more than 900 companies must certify to the Securities and Exchange Commission that their books are accurate. Until then, expect investors to respond to daily earnings reports much as they have so far: Last week, the Dow plummeted more than 650 points. Bottom-fishers pushed occasional rallies, but few held until day's end and no one seemed ready to say the worst was over. "We've overdone it on the down side, just as we overdid it on the upside," says First Albany's Hugh Johnson, who thinks an upward arc is as close as a few weeks away. "The only postwar bear market longer than this was 1946 to 1949, and that had to do with the wrenching process of converting the economy from wartime to postwar."

But pessimists prevail for now. "We still have a ways to go before we hit full capitulation," says Thomson First Call research director Chuck Hill. That's Wall Street's fancy word for throwing in the towel. If history is a guide, that would signal the start of the next upturn.