For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – August 31, 2009 – Zacks.com releases the list of companies likely to issue earnings surprises. This week’s list includes Adobe Systems (ADBE), Best Buy (BBY), and FedEx (FDX). To see more earnings analysis, visit http://at.zacks.com/?id=3207.

Every day, Zacks.com makes 4 stock picks available, free of charge. To see them, go to http://at.zacks.com/?id=5612.

This Week's Events

So how will the third-quarter look? The Zacks Consensus Estimate calls for S&P 500 earnings of $13.50 per share, a 15.4%

So how will the third-quarter look? The Zacks Consensus Estimate calls for S&P 500 earnings of $13.50 per share, a 15.4% decline from a year prior.

Going back to the week's events, the economic calendar will stay busy with inflation, manufacturing and housing data being released.

Tuesday: August Producer Price Index (PPI), August retail sales, September Empire State survey, July business inventories Wednesday: August Consumer Price Index (CPI), August industrial production and capacity utilization, September NAHB housing market index, weekly crude inventories, weekly mortgage applications Thursday: August housing starts

This post is a guest contribution by Rebecca Wilder*, author of the of the News N Economics blog.

In July, the Kansas City Fed reported - they measure the Kansas City Financial Stress Index (KCFSI), which is an composite index of 11 financial variables that reflects stress in the financial system - that the financial system is much improved since late last year, however, financial strain remains above the previous peak on October 1998 (Russian default).

What does this imply about credit flow right now? It’s anemic; except for revolving home equity lines of credit, credit extended across all loan types is just a few %-points higher than in January 2008 (nearing two years ago), and falling.

Remarkably, the Federal

The common adage has most every rally climbing a wall of worry. “If I buy now, I might get crushed for the fifth or sixth or seventh time in the past 10 years… but if I wait, the market might run on me, and I won’t see a decent entry price like this for years to come…”

What I am worried about is what will happen when investors fall off the top of this wall.

“Let me take my chances on the Wall of Death”

– Richard Thompson

An astute observer can easily see how Wall Street and Washington have been trying to push investors toward the latter position. For the past few weeks, we have heard endless examples of lagging corporate profits and failing economic numbers spun as “better than expected” buying signals.

Sometimes the stories are completely contradictory – like when the Fed claims one day that it

Different concepts of potential GDP

For serious macroeconomists, the magnitude (or existence) of the output gap is a central factor for determining the appropriate policy actions (see for instance Weidner and Williams). In several recent posts, I've discussed the variety of approaches to estimating the output gap [0] [1]. A recent symposium on Projecting Potential Growth published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is an excellent resource for anybody who wants to think seriously and carefully about the challenges in estimating this variable. In the lead article entitled "What Do We Know (And Not Know) About Potential Output?", the authors John Fernald and Susanto Basu write:

To keep the discussion manageable, we confine our discussion of potential output to neoclassical growth models with exogenous technical progress in the short and the long run; we also focus exclusively on the United States. We make

Chicago, IL - July 1, 2009 - Zacks Equity Research highlights Denbury (DNR) as the Bull of the Day and St. Joe Co (JOE) the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC).

Full analysis of all these stocks is available at http://at.zacks.com/?id=2676.

Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:

Bull of the Day:

Denbury (DNR) is a leading tertiary oil player, with a solid asset base and an impressive track record of production and reserve growth.

We expect this growth momentum to continue over the next 5 years. Our continued favorable view of Denbury shares reflects the company's low-risk profile and oil-centric niche business model.

We consider management's recent Barnett Shale

So far, the Fed has reduced interest rates to almost zero and pledged to buy up to nearly $1.8 trillion worth of U.S. government and mortgage debt in order to combat a severe recession. This has been an attempt to prevent the economy from slipping into deflation, similar to what occurred in Japan when that country endured a decade of stagnation during the 1990s.

However, the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank's President James Bullard has pointed out that having a withdrawal plan of the massive expansion of the U.S. monetary base is just as important. Without an exit strategy, expectations of high inflation may develop and feed into today's long-term yields. Therefore, financial institutions such as but not limited to

“Words from the Wise” this week comes to you in a shortened format as I do not have access to my normal research resources while on the road in Europe (also see my post “Gone A.W.O.L. - to Slovenia and Switzerland“). Although very little commentary is provided, a full dose of excerpts from interesting news items and quotes from market commentators is included.

While investors’ hopes of an economic recovery might have got ahead of reality, the cartoonists continually reminded us of worrisome issues …

Source: Signe Wilkinson, Washington Post,  June 18, 2009.

The past week’s performance of the major asset classes is summarized by the chart below - a mixed bag so to speak.

Source: StockCharts.com

A summary of

The biggest financial reform of our generation… The 5 dives headfirst into Obama’s new plan… Stock market sell-off pauses… Wayne Burritt with the next short-term technical target… Dollar dips on new government reform… Chris Mayer on the near certainty of inflation… Paul Van Eden packs some sober advice on gold… Plus, feeling frustrated by the Fed’s free reign? A cause worth supporting, below…

Are we reading this right? The new president wants to give the Federal Reserve… more power?  The very body that’s easy credit policies over the past 15 years helped fulminate the largest speculative bubble in history… could soon oversee nearly every major company in the U.S.?

In a surprisingly brief (for Washington standards) 88-page plan released yesterday, President Obama revealed the first steps toward the biggest financial overhaul since post-Depression reform. We could fill the next five minutes with juicy bits from the plan,

The financial debate during the past few days was dominated by President Obama’s sweeping revamp of financial market supervision, and this issue also occupies a number of slots in today’s Video-o-rama.

But it was not all about regulation, as pundits were also trying to figure out whether there were in fact economic “green shoots” and what the implications for financial markets might be. Commentators include Michael Lewis, John Rogers, Robert Kleinschmidt, Jack Welch, Barry Ritholtz, Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Roach, Mario Gabelli and George Friedman.

The compilation kicks off with author Michael Lewis discussing his article “The End of Wall Street”, and concludes with a fascinating analysis of the Iranian situation by George Friedman of Stratfor, geopolitical analysts.

You Tube: Michael Lewis - the end of Wall Street? “Author Michael Lewis discusses how his experience working at Salomon Brothers and writing Liar’s Poker influenced his article, ‘The End of Wall