The market is neither cheering Friday's awful unemployment headline, nor has it suddenly found the crystal ball to see through the economic fog. I will chalk the market's recent positive momentum, including today's impressive run up, to a number of small positives that are pushing it to the upper bounds of a 600 - 800 point range (in the Dow).

On balance, I don't expect the market to breakout clearly to the upside until visibility on the economic front improves. And I don't see any major danger on the horizon that can substantially pull it lower, either. However, some pullback should be expected after strong run ups like today.

What are some of these positives that I am referring to?

As we pointed out in the weekly Roundtable Review video, Friday's jobs report was overall quite bad, but it had a few positive aspects as well. We

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 5, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Wal-Mart (WMT), Target (TGT), Claymore China Small Cap ETF (HAO), Coca-Cola (KO) and Aflac (AFL).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Wednesday’s AnalystBlog:

China Booming Again

The long-term key for China is to generate more consumer demand at home so it is not forever dependent on exports to fuel its growth. This is the mirror image of what the U.S. needs. We cannot forever run trade deficits, consuming more from the rest of the

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The World Bank now estimates that China will grow 8.4% in 2009, up from its June forecast of 7.2% growth. Like the U.S., China embarked on a large fiscal stimulus program, one that relative to the size of its economy is more than three times as large as the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act was. Well, surprise, surprise -- a bigger package has been more effective than a smaller one at lifting economic growth. China, of course, is in a better fiscal position to invest in its economy than the U.S. That is a legacy of the years of fiscal mismanagement in the U.S. going into the crisis, and the fact that China perpetually runs large trade surpluses while the U.S. runs chronic trade deficits. For 2010, as some of the stimulus in China wears off -- but as the private economy there regains its footing -- ...

Aflac Inc.’s (AFL) operating earnings in the third quarter stood at $1.25 per share, which was a nickel ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.20. This also compares favorably with earnings of $1.02 in the year-ago quarter. The upside was primarily based on better-than-expected sales in its Japan operations resulting from continued strengthening of the yen against the dollar.   GAAP net income for the quarter came in at $363 million, or 77 cents per share, compared to $100 million, or 21 cents in the year-ago quarter.   Net income for the third quarter included after-tax realized investment losses of $226 million, or 48 cents per share, compared to realized investment losses of $389 million, or 81 cents in the prior-year quarter. The company also realized investment losses of $22 million from the impairment of a collateralized debt obligation and $5 million primarily from the impairment of collateralized

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Late Friday, the Treasury Department released the budget deficit for August. It came in at $111.4 billion, which was far better than the $140 billion monthly shortfall that had been expected. It was also slightly less than the budget shortfall in August 2008. And it was a huge improvement over the $180.7 billion deficit in July. However, don’t get too excited about the month-to-month decline as the monthly budget deficit numbers are extremely seasonal. Although that seasonality is reason to be very optimistic. Not long ago, the projections for the fiscal 2009 budget deficit were running at about $1.8 Trillion. With 11 months now under our belt (the Government's fiscal year ends in September), the cumulative deficit is now $1.38 Trillion.  Thus if September were to come in at the same level as August, the deficit for the year would end up at $1.49 Trillion. However, it is extremely ...

AFLAC Inc. (AFL) second quarter adjusted operating earnings (excluding one-time items) came in at $1.20 per share, compared to $1.22 cents in the prior quarter and $1.01 per share in the year-ago quarter. Results were 6 cents ahead of Zacks consensus estimate. AFLAC’s upside was primarily based on better-than-expected sales in its Japan operations resulting from continued strengthening of the yen against the dollar, partly offsetting the increase in realized investment losses. Net earnings were $314 million or 67 cents per share compared to $569 million or $1.22 per diluted share in the prior quarter and $483 million or $1.00 per diluted share in the prior-year quarter. Net earnings included net realized investment losses of $249 million or 53 cents per share, compared to a loss of $1 million or break-even in the prior-year quarter. Adjusting the total net realized investment losses, operating earnings for ...

AFLAC's (AFL) 4Q08 operating earnings of $458 million or $0.98 per diluted share were 2 pennies short of our estimate as well as consensus, primarily based on lower-than-expected sales results in its Japan operations.However, the results benefited from the strengthening of the yen to the dollar during the quarter. We anticipate modest improvement in AFL's Japan sales, as sales through the new channels (banks and the Japan Post network) gather momentum in the coming quarters but the economic slowdown will hurt the sales, both in U.S. as well as in Japan.Though its continuous improvement in benefit ratio in Japan is impressive, increased losses in the investment portfolio and recent rating downgrades are the major concerns at present. As such, we are maintaining our Hold rating on the shares of AFL.Kalyan Nandy contributed to this report.Read the full analyst ...

This post is a guest contribution by Jeffrey Saut, Chief Investment Strategist and Managing Director of Equity Research at Raymond James & Associates.

I believe “income” will be a profitable investment theme for the foreseeable future. Indeed, the baby boomers are retiring; and, the yields afforded them via Treasury securities, money-market funds, and certificates of deposit (CDs) won’t supplement their retirement account incomes enough to support them in the style to which they have become accustomed. Enter stocks, which since 1926 have averaged a total annualized return of 10.4%.

Interestingly, roughly 5% of that return has come from earnings growth, 0.9% has come from price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple expansions – but 4.5% of said return was derived from

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div style=”text-align: justify;”Merrill Lynch/Bac is upgrading span style=”font-weight: bold;”Aflac (NYSE:AFL)/span to Buy from Neutral with a price tgt of $48 (down from $71).br /br /Aflac has historically generated substantial excess capital and they expect that this trend will continue. In addition to estimated on balance sheet excess capital of $500 million to $1.0 billion, the firm forecast free capital generation (after common dividends and assuming no debt issuance to replace maturing debt) of $1.5 billion during the next two years. The statutory operating return on capital is 35% to 40%, which provides the flexibility to add a substantial amount to the regulatory capital base or, in today’s environment, offset material investment losses.br /br /span style=”font-weight: bold;”Hybrid risk is real, but ability to absorb losses over time/spanbr /The stock has sold off dramatically during the past week on fears of exposure to hybrid securities issued by financial institutions. Merrill thinks elevated …

Had there not been a massive financial crisis crippling the U.S. economy over the past two months and seemingly dominating the public's short attention span for news, this very well could have been the foreign policy election of the post-Cold War era. Even Vladimir Putin has incredibly suggested that the war in Georgia was masterminded by the U.S. government with the aim of giving John McCain a vehicle to the presidency - though while a preposterous argument, one could still sense a note of disappointment that his "we are all Georgians" speech couldn't hold the headlines for more than a day. Nowadays in their stump speeches, if either candidate talks about a financial aid package to Georgia, most voters will likely be thinking of bailouts for Delta Airlines and Aflac to shore up jobs in the Atlanta area.