"We are beginning to think our downgrade to neutral this past summer may have been premature."

That's a quote from a Goldman Sachs (GS) report on Starbucks (SBUX) after the java joint reported an amazing quarter, including a 10% bump in same-store sales and tremendous international expansion.

But it might have been applicable to so many companies this quarter, so many that have reported and not skipped a beat or been much better than expected or shown incredible resilience in the face of all of the things that the media talk about, many of which are actually worth talking about.

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Starbucks, frankly, defies conventional wisdom every day and has been opening stores around the world at a pace that would normally lead to tremendous screw-ups. But the execution seems to be getting better and better.

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It's just very difficult to believe. And that's the issue with so much of the research that came out during the summer dive. You see research like the Starbucks downgrade was more global, more macro than micro, an extrapolation of what had to happen -- namely, the collapse of Greece, the crush of Italy, the lack of new jobs anywhere, the government near shutdown -- versus what did happen.

You needed a full-scale apocalypse to happen for some of these companies to be defeated, and it didn't.

So we find ourselves smack in the middle of some excellent reports coupled with analysts who are stunned that the companies can do so well, which is how stocks like Starbucks can continue to climb, even as it is already up more than 40% in the past year.

Defying analysts' expectations. It's never been this easy, thanks the horrendous macro environment and the insistence by fabulous executives like Howard Schultz to give in to the headwinds that are supposed to stop them in their tracks.

Yep, the downgrade was premature. And with the momentum that Starbucks has going into next year -- particularly the momentum in China, where the company is building a new cafe every four days -- I think an upgrade, not a downgrade, would be more fitting for this fabulous growth company.

At the time of publication, Action Alerts PLUS, which Cramer co-manages as a charitable trust, had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

Jim Cramer is a co-founder of TheStreet and contributes daily market commentary to the financial news network's sites. Follow his trades for his charitable trust.