The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI -0.11%) is falling today after a few poor earnings reports have a number of stocks crashing. As of 1 p.m. EDT the blue-chip index is down 37 points, or 0.25%, while the S&P 500 is off by 0.04% and the NASDAQ has lost 0.25%. Other than the poor earnings, investors are focusing on the big fall in durable-goods orders, which was more than double what analysts had estimated. 

A few Dow losers
Shares of Procter & Gamble (PG 0.68%) are down 5.3% after the company reported better-than-expected earnings on lower-than-estimated revenue and painted a poor picture of the future. CEO Robert McDonald said he feels the economic recovery will remain "choppy" moving forward. This led his team to forecast weaker profit for the next quarter. The company struggled the most with it personal-care items and said it will focus more attention on boosting revenue from its Pantene shampoo line and Olay skin-care products. 

Cisco's (CSCO 0.06%) shares are down 2.7% this afternoon despite the fact that the company just announced new solutions that deliver higher performance, better reliability, and scalability to storage area networks. The Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director delivers three times the bandwidth of any other storage director currently offered on the market. Cisco is claiming the new device will dominate the market, but it's clear by looking at the drop in its share price today that investors don't feel the same.

It has been a rough day for the Dow's telecommunications companies. AT&T (T 1.88%) is down 5.6%, making it the worst-performing Dow component today, after it announced earnings this morning. The poor results are also pulling its closest competitor, Verizon (VZ -0.53%), down by 1.2%, even though the report actually made Verizon look stronger. AT&T added 269,000 new wireless customers during the quarter, but most of those new subscribers signed up for Internet only, not the higher-margin phone and Internet combination packages. Today's report solidified the idea that Verizon is gaining market share from AT&T on the phone side of their businesses, which will likely bear more fruit for Verizon in the long run.