Daily Archives: November 15, 2009

Earnings Duel on Deck: Lowe’s vs. Home Depot (LOW, HD)

Money Stack PicThis week’s earnings calendar is going to be dominated by retail earnings.  Early in the week you have the home improvement and building material wars with earnings first out of Lowe’s Companies Inc. (NYSE: LOW) on Monday and then Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) on Tuesday.

We have compiled estimates from Thomson Reuters, made some key comments on what to look for in each report, shown past performance, and given some added color on what to look for ahead.  We have some concerns here about how these stocks are valued.  We also showed the relative performance for 2009, the gains since March 9 that traders use as the official end of the death spiral, and we are also showing performance since July 31.
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Posted on: November 15, 2009 – 10:46 am in Calendar, Earnings, Housing, Retail, ,

24/7 Wall St. TV: China Pushes US To Raise Interest Rates Which Would Undermine Recovery

The Federal Reserve and most economists believe that keeping US interest rates at near zero has been critical to the recovery of the American economy. Even with rates at historically low levels, banks and financial companies have been stingy in their lending practices because of the fear of risk from providing capital to people and businesses whose financial positions have been crippled by the recession.

Fed officials have hinted that the agency may not move rates up at all until 2011 because unemployment and tight credit will only allow a very fragile advance in GDP between now and then.

China would like the US to raise interest rates based on its theory that the low cost of capital is causing massive speculation in equity and commodities markets. China claims that Fed policy will cause bubbles that will burst and cause both another sharp downturn in the global economy and damage to the credit markets. Read More »

Posted on: November 15, 2009 – 7:49 am in China, Economy, Editor's Picks, TV,