For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 19, 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: D.R. Horton (DHI), Pulte (PHM), Owens Corning (OC), Masco (MAS) and EnCana Corporation (ECA).

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 Analyst Blog:

Housing Starts, Permits Plunge

Housing prices are still under pressure, despite unprecedented steps by the Federal government and the Federal Reserve to prop up the price of that asset class. Artificial government support is not as durable a way to prop up prices as a better balance between supply and demand

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In October, Housing Starts fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of just 529,000, a 10.6% decline from September and down 30.7% from a year ago.  That puts housing starts at their lowest level since April, and takes a lot of steam out of the incipient economic recovery. Most of the damage, however, came in the very volatile apartment and condo area. Starts in buildings with five or more units dropped to their lowest level yet in this cycle at an annualized rate of just 48,000. That is down 33.3% from September and is off 78.1% from an already depressed level of a year ago. When most people think about housing starts, they think about single family starts.  There the news was bad, but not quite as bad as the news from "condo-land." Nationwide, single-family housing starts fell 6.8% from September and are down 10.9% from a year ago, ...

While there is ample evidence that the world economy is starting to pick up steam, one of the traditional engines for driving the U.S. economy out of recession is sputtering. Both Building Permits and Housing Starts for September came in well below expectations. Housing starts nationwide were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 590,000, up 0.5% from the 587,000 annual rate in August and down 28.2% from a year ago. As is shown in the chart below (from http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/) it is not as if housing starts were exactly robust a year ago. At their peak they were over 2.2 million. The number was also well below consensus expectations of a 610,000 annual rate. Making things worse, the August number was revised sharply lower from an initial read of 598,000. The one silver lining in the starts data is that the weakness was mostly in the ...

• Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) beat Street estimates, posting second quarter earnings of $1.15 per share, ex-items, four cents ahead of expectations, versus $1.18 a year ago, on revenues of $15.2 billion

• Fastenal (NASDAQ:FAST) reported second quarter earnings miss at 29 cents per share, 4 pennies off Street estimates of 33 cents, as revenues fell short of the $487.10 million target, posting at $474.9 million

• Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) warned of gross margin pressure in the second quarter, likely to generate only slight sequential revenue gains versus estimates of 1.6% growth.  Although asserting stabilization in its IT product demand y/y, the firm stated profits were affected by "the result of higher component costs, a competitive pricing environment, and an unfavorable mix of product and business-segment demand"

• CSX (NYSE:CSX) reported better-than-expected earnings of 72 cents a share from continuing operations, a dime ahead of estimates, versus 95 cents a year ago, despite a

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL - June 11, 2009 - Zacks Equity Research highlights SINA Corp. (SINA) as the Bull of the Day and Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (PHG) the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Masco (MAS), Dryships (DRYS) and Ford (F).

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:

SINA Corp. (SINA) is a leading provider of online media and value-added information services to the global Chinese community. The company posted a year-over-year increase in revenue, but results were below our estimates. SINA provided encouraging Q2 guidance.

However, economic growth in the country has continued to slow during to the global downturn. The company is also facing severe competition in

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The recession is moderating, though growth will not occur in the second halfThe June Beige Book confirmed what I have been saying for weeks: the pace of deterioration has slowed. Five districts said that the "downward trend is showing signs of moderating."Counter-balancing this was the expectation that there will not be "a substantial increase in economic activity" throughout the remainder of the year. Again, this is inline what with the trends I'm drawing from the economic and earnings estimate revision data. Conditions are improving, but we are nowhere near to getting out the woods.On the positive side, signs of improvement were noted in import and export activity, discount retail and lower-priced homes. Though this might sound like good news for Masco (MAS) or Dryships (DRYS), it's important to note that we're still far from a recovery in housing or transportation....

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL - May 20, 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: Petrobras (PBR), Repsol YPF S.A. (REP), D.R. Horton (DHI), Weyerhaeuser (WY) and Masco (MAS).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=4579.

Here are highlights from Tuesday's Analyst Blog:

Petrobras Brings Good News

Yesterday, Petrobras (PBR) announced the finding of a new oil field, named BM-S-3, in the Santos Basin. This new block is close to the field BM-S-7, which Petrobras and Repsol YPF S.A. (REP) recently declared commercial feasibility. Even better, this

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Highlighted stocks include D.R. Horton (DHI), Bank of America (BAC) Wells Fargo (WFC), Weyerhaeuser (WY) and Masco (MAS).First, let's start with the good news. Nationwide, housing starts fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 466,000 in January, down 16.8% from a 560,000 rate in December and down 56.2% from a 1,064,000 rate a year ago. We are currently faced with an unprecedented glut of houses for sale, and building more of them simply does not make any economic sense.Building permits also fell, but not as sharply, to a 521,000 rate from 547,000 a year ago and 1,052,000 a year ago, drops of 4.8% for the month and 50.5% on a year-over-year basis. The higher level of permits might indicate a little bit of a rebound in starts in the coming months, but nothing very dramatic.The excess ...

Discussed in this post are D.R. Horton (DHI), Pulte (PHM), Weyerhaeuser (WY), Masco (MAS) and Whirlpool (WHR).In December, both Housing Starts and Building Permits fell to their lowest level on record, and those records go back to 1959. Furthermore, the figures are not adjusted for population growth, and there are a lot more people in the country than there were back when Ike was president, or even in the last major housing downturn in the early 1990's, or in the previous worst housing decline in the early 1980's.From a big picture point of view, however, I see declines in housing starts and permits to be good news, since it will allow for the huge inventory overhang to be worked off. To put it another way, any new residential investment at this point is simply mal-investment.However, I am sure that the vast majority of ...