Companies whose third-quarter earnings reports disappoint investors are seeing their share prices drop more sharply than usual, the Financial Times reported.

Those companies’ stock prices have averaged a 5.5-percent cut in days following their unhappy news; the historical average is 2.3 percent, according to data service FactSet. 

Companies that miss their numbers even slightly “are being overly penalized,” David Souccar, a Vontobel portfolio manager, told the FT.

Alphabet’s price tumbled almost 10 percent last week on news that its cloud computing service was weaker than expected. Meta’s earnings per share shot up 17 percent but the stock price dropped 3.9 percent after its CFO warned that ad revenue might fall due to the Mideast war.

After Chevron announced its third-quarter earnings had fallen sharply year over year, investors sucked 13 percent out of its stock price, sending it into its worst weekly plunge in more than a year.

Investors are skittish and are more closely assessing which stocks are likely to be hurt by current high interest rates and a possible economic downturn or recession, analysts said to the FT.

Treatment has been even more harsh in Europe.

Worldline, a French online payments company, saw investors chop 60 percent from its market value after it cut its financial outlook. British firm CAB Payments had been listed on the market for only three months when it scaled back its revenue projection. Investors then scaled back its stock price by 72 percent. 

TREND FORECAST: The unreasonably harsh punishment for companies that fail to make their numbers indicates that investors still have a toe in equities but are seeing more reasons to pull out than to wade in deeper.

The glut of treasury bonds on the market, with more on the way, will keep yields up and stock prices weak. With a recession on the near horizon and our forecasts for escalating the Israel and Ukraine wars, the stock markets have further to fall through the rest of this year… with a high probability for a crash!