Third-quarter earnings came in strong, but the results raised some red flags about future growth. Companies slashed their spending on factories, equipment and other performance-enhancing investments by 16% from year-earlier levels, write CFOJ’s Maxwell Murphy and Vipal Monga and the WSJ’s Neil Shah in today’s Marketplace section. Almost 90% of the companies that have given financial forecasts for the final quarter of the year have prompted Wall Street analysts to lower their numbers.