Dressing up the profit picture // On Wall St., expectations are everything

NEW YORK The choreography is so careful, so deliberate, that evena quarter can be dressed up as a pleasant surprise.

And so, despite all the concern about the economic crisis inAsia, company profits from the first three months of 1998 are lookingpretty decent.

Through Thursday, about 120 of the companies in the Standard &Poor's 500 had reported on their first-quarter results, and nearlyfour out of every five of those reports had either beaten or matchedWall Street forecasts.Combined, those profits are about 2.7 percent better than whatsecurities analysts had expected for those companies, according tothe latest tally by First Call.There's a catch. Compare the …