Stocks Battle Higher, Dollar Gains Ground, Costco Cuts Coke

  • November 17, 2009
  • David Goodboy

Stocks traded in an erratic and mostly negative manner during the morning session. Rising energy costs lifted stocks into positive territory midday despite a stronger dollar. Mixed retail news and word of big box discount club Costco cutting Coke products due to a dispute added to the generally lackluster, erratic session. The DJIA advanced +30.46 to 10437.42, the tech heavy Nasdaq battled +5.93 higher to 2203.78 and the broad based S&P 500 eased higher by +1.01 to 1110.31.

Home Depot
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PowerRating): Dropped by 2.39% or 66 cents to $26.99/share after stating forecasts missing analysts’ expectations.

Pacific Sunwear
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PowerRating): Missed analysts’ estimates by 21%, sending shares steeply lower by 22.55% or $1.13 to $3.88.

Target Corp
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PowerRating): Fell 3.02% or $1.52 to $48.77/share upon stating that the average transaction size has fell and it plans on seeing a decrease in fourth quarter comparable store sales.

Saks
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PowerRating): Added 4.06% or 26 cents to $6.67/share after posting a profit instead of the expected loss in the third quarter.

Oil added 24 cents to $79.31, gold advanced 20 cents to $1139.40 and the VIX index gave back 2.10% to 22.41.

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Market Snapshot

Dow

 +30.46 10437.42

NASDAQ

 +5.93 2203.78

S&P 500

 +1.01 1110.31

Economic
News

Retail Sales (Oct): Consensus: 0.9%, Prior: -1.5%, Revise From: -1.5%

Retail Sales ex-auto (Oct): Consensus: 0.4%, Prior: 0.4%, Revise From: 0.5%

Empire Manufacturing (Nov): Consensus: 30.00, Prior: 34.57

Business Inventories (Sep): Consensus: -0.7%, Prior: -1.6%, Revise From: -1.5%

Core PPI (Oct): Consensus: 0.1%, Prior: -0.1%

PPI (Oct): Consensus: 0.5%, Prior: -0.6%

Net Long-Term TIC Flows (Sep): Consensus: $35.0B, Prior: $28.6B

Capacity Utilization (Oct): Consensus: 70.8%, Prior: 70.5%

Industrial Production (Oct): Consensus: 0.4%, Prior: 0.7%

Housing Starts (Oct): Consensus: 600K, Prior: 590K

Building Permits (Oct): Consensus: 580K, Prior: 573K

CPI (Oct): Consensus: 0.2%, Prior: 0.2%

Core CPI (Oct): Consensus: 0.1%, Prior: 0.2%

Crude Inventories (11/13): Consensus: NA, Prior: 1.76M

Initial Claims (11/14): Consensus: 504K, Prior: 502K

Continuing Claims (11/13): Consensus: 5600K, Prior: 5631K

Leading Indicators (Oct): Consensus: 0.4%, Prior: 1.0%

Philadelphia Fed (Nov): Consensus: 12.0, Prior: 11.5