Baltimore — (TFN): Some good friends of mine recently took their TV out to their front yard, put two high-brass shells in their 12 gauge and pulled the trigger.  They rendered the hunk of glass and plastic useless. Called it Alaskan waste disposal.

After last night, I’m ready to get out the 00 buckshot, myself.

I’ve got my eye out for good intentions, gone bad after spending the last three editions of Notes discussing the idea of financial regulatory reform.

During 52-mile commute home yesterday, they were all over the place, anything from idiotic signs to a couple of state cops setting a trap and writing tickets for not moving to the left lane when passing a stopped emergency vehicle.

The gung-ho troopers had rush-hour traffic slowed for over a mile.

But my mind really started spinning when I passed an out-of-state big rig. I could not help but notice the federal and state ID

...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 17, 2009 - Zacks Research Equity Strategist, Dirk Van Dijk says that S&P 500 earnings are continuing to show red ink. He tracks companies on the Zacks.com web site, naming names, while forecasting trends for the months ahead.

Great Earnings Season Coming to an End

It’s almost time to close the books on a fantastic earnings season. With over 90% of reports in, there have been 353 which have exceeded expectations while only 66 have fallen short, a ratio of 5.35. While it is true that most companies will normally try to under-promise and over-deliver, this quarter the beats are beating the misses by about twice the normal margin of 3:1.

Nor have all the surprises only been by a penny or two, but there have been lots of companies that simply crushed the earnings estimates. The median surprise is a very

...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 11, 2009 - Zacks Research Equity Strategist, Dirk Van Dijk says that S&P 500 earnings are continuing to show red ink. He tracks companies on the Zacks.com web site, naming names, while forecasting trends for the months ahead.

Earnings Season in Home Stretch

For a large sector, the revisions ratio of 9.07 for the Industrials is extremely impressive, and would seem to support the idea that the economy is gaining some real traction. More than five times as many firms in the sector saw their mean estimate for 2010 rise over the last month than suffered a decline in their expectations.

Some of the firms in the sector that have seen double-digit increases in both their mean estimate and double-digit numbers of estimate increases and have had no cuts over the last month include Caterpillar (CAT), Eaton (

...

U.S. stocks surged Monday, with the Dow Jones industrial average storming to its highest level in more than 13 months as finance ministers from the Group of 20 industrialized nations pledged to continue economic stimulus measures to help the global economy.

The Dow Jones industrial average, which was well supported by strength in its all but one component, rose 203 points, or 2.0%, to a 13-month high of 10,227.  The S&P500 climbed 2.2% for its sixth straight session gain to 1093 and the tech-heavy NASDAQ gained 2.0% to close at 2154.  The market’s measure of volatility, the CBOE Vix, plunged 4.3% to 23.15.

All ten S&P500 industry groups ended in the green, led by gains in basic material shares (+3.5%) and financials (+3.5%).  Crude prices added $2.00 to close at $79.43 even as Hurricane Ida was downgraded to a tropical storm.  Gold prices went past the $1100 level, up

...

We have just launched with a brand new a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/trading_system/trading_system.aspx"Trading System/a builder which will allow you to create your own trading strategies and follow the trade signals generated via email. You will eventually have the opportunity to earn money selling it in the a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/trading_strategies/market_trading_strategies.aspx"Zignals MarketPlace/a. If you would like to read more about our Trading System builder you can do so a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/trading_system/trading_system_help.aspx"here/a. br /br /But first things first; FREE registration with Zignals followed by a prompt to download Microsoft's Silverlight will give access to the trading strategy builder. For this article I am working through the Zignals a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/dashboard/dashboard.aspx"Dashboard/a which gives full access to all of our services (a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/stock_alerts/stock_alerts.aspx"stock alerts/a, a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/stock_charts/stock_charts.aspx"stock charts/a, a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/stock_screener/stock_screener.aspx"stock screener/a and a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/portfolio_manager/portfolio_manager.aspx"portfolio manager/a) within a single application. The key advantage of using this over the individual applications is the seamless switching between applications. br /br /We shall start with a ...

Key Points: •    Earnings Surprise Ratio (#beat/#miss) at 5.47, almost double normal •    Median Earnings Surprise  7.11%, very strong •    Year over year Earnings Growth Ratio (# Pos Growth/# Neg Growth) at 0.77 •    Sales Surprise Ratio at 1.37 •    Sales Growth Ratio at just 0.40 •    Total Net Income for S&P 500 reported so far is 11.6% below what those same 444 firms reported a year ago, 11.8% above what they earned in the 2Q09 •    Total S&P 500 Revenues reported so far down 13.4% year over year, up 2.0% from 2Q09 •    2009 Earnings Revisions ratio for full S&P 500 up to 3.05, up from 2.48 last week •    2010 ratio at 2.14, down slightly from 2.17 last week •    S&P500 expected to earn $570.6 billion in 2008, $706.8 billion in 2010 •    Bottom Up estimates:  $61.62 for 2009, $76.70 for 2010 •    Top Down estimates: $54.38 ...

The economy is recovering, yet the Labor market is still in the doldrums (we will see just how bad tomorrow morning). In other words, output is up, yet the number of hours of work to create that output is down. This, by definition, means that output per hour -- otherwise known as productivity -- is going up. Today we found out by just how much. Non-farm business productivity grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 9.5% in the third quarter, the highest rate since the third quarter of 2003 when it hit 9.7%. Output grew at a 4.0% rate, while hours worked fell at a 5.0% rate in the third quarter. On a year-over-year basis, productivity grew 4.3% as output fell by 3.5% while hours worked fell by a staggering 7.5%. That was an all-time record (since the government started keeping track back in 1948). To ...

A tepid report on housing starts sent stocks into a tizzy and major indexes slipped from their year highs as solid earnings reports from Apple Inc. to Caterpillar were overlooked by anxious investors.  A rebound in dollar from its 14-month lows also added to the downward pressure and hurt commodities, sending energy and material shares lower. 

Weakness in share sent Treasury prices higher, with the 10-year closing up 13/32, to 102 11/32.  The yield fell to 3.34%, from 3.39% late Monday.  On Tuesday, the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average fell 50.71 points, or 0.50%, to 10,041.48.  The broad Standard & Poor's 500-stock index retreated 6.85 points, or 0.62%, at 1,091.06 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index lost 12.85 points, or 0.59%, to 2,163.47.  Market breadth was negative.  On the New York Stock Exchange, declining shares beat those that rose in price two to one on volume of 1.24 billion

...

MARKET COMMENT October 20, 2009 TAKING A BREAK It was a pretty strange day. Logic would argue for a big rally following earnings from Apple, Texas Instruments and Caterpillar; but no, instead investors focused on weaker than expected housing data and sold. It’s like I said at the end of last night’s commentary: “that’s why they play the game.” As this is written, the “better than expected” earnings are rolling in from the likes of Yahoo and SanDisk. Both stocks are bid higher in after hours trading. And volume is repeating the previous pattern of being heavier (although today’s volume was hardly “heavy”) on selling than buying. Breadth was negative. ...

• Adecco announced plans to acquire professional staffing firm MPS (NYSE:MPS) for $1.3 billion

• Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) bettered earnings and revenue expectations with third quarter adjusted results of 51 cents a share, 3 cent higher than Zacks estimates, on revenues of $11.6 billion, which beat Zacks estimates of $11.47 billion. Full-year guidance was also raised to $2.00-$2.05 from $1.90-$2.00 prior

• United Technologies (NYSE:UTX) third quarter numbers beat consensus estimates with earnings of $1.14 versus Zacks estimates of $1.12 on revenues of $13.38 billion up from estimates of $13.40 billion. The firm expects full year earnings in the mid-point of its earlier guidance of $4.00-$4.20

• State Street (NYSE:STT) reported third quarter operating earnings of $1.05 a share, beating Zacks estimates of $1.00 a share, as revenues of $2.77 billion were above estimates of $2.22 billion. However, the company lowered full-year operating results from $4.25-$4.50 to $4.13-$4.17

• Comerica (NYSE:CMA) reported third quarter earnings

...