• Two Percent Down Days
    Posted by on November 14th, 2006 at 1:14 pm

    The S&P 500 hasn’t had a down day of 2% or more since May 19, 2003. That’s the longest streak ever according to my data which goes back to 1950. Here are the other streaks, when they ended and how many days.
    11/14/06 1275 (current)
    10/31/78 1168
    1/8/86 1080
    5/14/73 1056
    7/28/69 1029
    8/26/66 1008

  • What’s Dennis Up to These Days?
    Posted by on November 14th, 2006 at 10:27 am

    Remember Dennis Kozlowski? Me neither. Apparently, he used to be somewhat important. In any event, Bloomberg visits Denny in the Greybar Hotel:

    Kozlowski now plays baseball and softball behind the barbed wire and steel doors of the state prison. He’s passes time reading biographies of U.S. presidents and Che Guevara, the revolutionary leader. His latest book, given to him by a former Tyco employee, details the life of Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
    “I probably read over 100 books,” he said.
    His wife Karen filed for divorce last summer. The birthday party Kozlowski threw for her on Sardinia in 2001 was among many Tyco-financed extravagances presented to the jury that convicted him. He declined to talk about Karen.
    Kozlowski is one of 12 men housed in the protective custody unit at Mid-State, Foglia said. He’s allowed to spend 16 hours a day outside his cell and works as a dining room attendant and a teacher’s aide.
    “He’s not making anything more than $1.05 a day,” Foglia said.

    LOL

  • WallStrip on Digital River
    Posted by on November 14th, 2006 at 10:13 am

    Today, Linday & Co. take a look at Digital River (DRIV).
    If you can’t get enough Lindsay, here she is not getting the guy in a Volvo commercial. And here she is expecting triplets in an ad for Lowe’s (LOW). Enjoy.

  • Home Depot Misses Earnings
    Posted by on November 14th, 2006 at 9:55 am

    The housing market has taken another casualty. Today, Home Depot (HD) reported earnings of 73 cents a share, two cents below estimates. Overall revenues rose 11.3%, but same-store sales dropped 5.1%.

    Going forward, Home Depot said it believes its fiscal 2006 earnings per share will grow 4 percent to 5 percent over fiscal 2005 and that sales will grow for the year by about 12 percent. It had earlier projected earnings per share growth for the year to be on the low end of a range of 10 percent to 14 percent and sales growth for the year to be on the low end of a range of 14 percent to 17 percent.

  • Earnings Preview: Home Depot
    Posted by on November 13th, 2006 at 1:48 pm

    From AP:

    OVERVIEW: As the housing market cools off, home-improvement companies are suffering as well. Falling lumber prices have cut into revenue, and several suppliers have reported lower results and outlooks recently, including Home Depot’s largest supplier, Masco Corp.
    In an effort to improve performance, Home Depot in October said it is putting chief executive Bob Nardelli in closer contact with top leaders throughout the company, with the four division presidents in the U.S. and Mexico reporting directly to him.
    Chief Financial Officer Carol Tome also took responsibility for supporting store operations, including asset protection and customer service initiatives.
    Home Depot is also reviewing Nardelli’s compensation in light of a sagging stock price.
    In September, the company said it would hire 1,000 new employees across the country, part of a plan to invest $350 million in its stores during the second half of the year. In August Home Depot cut 300 jobs at its headquarters in Atlanta as part of the plan.
    BY THE NUMBERS: Analysts are looking for a profit of 75 cents per share on revenue of $23.39 billion, according to a Thomson Financial poll.
    ANALYST TAKE: Credit Suisse analyst Gary Balter, who rates shares of Home Depot “Neutral,” forecast earnings of 74 cents per share and expects investors to pay as much attention to whether Home Depot meets expectations as how it get there and where it’s going.
    “Meeting expectations on cost cuts and share repurchases will not satisfy investors, in our view,” Balter wrote in a note on Monday.
    He expects Home Depot to lower its 2007 earnings growth guidance of 10 percent, or $3. “Should they move closer to our level of $2.90 vs. consensus of $2.95, that could pressure shares,” Balter wrote. “More important are comments on how protracted the slowdown will be.”
    Danielle Fox of Merrill Lynch, who rates Home Depot’s stock as a “Buy,” expects earnings in line with consensus.
    “Existing home sales slowed in the relevant six-month prior period, commodity prices are down, and the company is lapping last year’s 37 basis point comps lift from hurricanes,” she wrote in a Nov. 6 analyst note. “We expect the revenue contribution from Home Depot Supply, cost controls, and accretive share repurchases to drive modest growth this quarter as the company reinvests in store labor to improve service levels.”

  • Blogging Silicon Valley
    Posted by on November 13th, 2006 at 11:13 am

    Bambi Francisco writes that Gawker founder, Nick Denton, will temporarily take over reporting duties at ValleyWag, his Silicon Valley gossip site. He said that he wants to bring in more business gossip instead of just personal gossip.

    He tells me that he has a juicy scoop about John Battelle’s Federated Media advertising network losing a major client. The loss is a “slap in the face” to Battelle, says Denton, who self-funded Gawker Media, which was launched in 2002.
    Denton hopes to triple the traffic at ValleyWag, which he said was getting an average of 20,000 or so daily pageviews. He doesn’t plan on changing the tone too much, just mixing in financial news gossip with tabloid gossip. “We’ll still publish the scoop on Larry Page’s inhouse dating, or Eric Schmidt’s long-time adultery,” he said, via AOL’s IM. I asked Denton why publishing lies about Schmidt added any value or was worth reporting on. His response: “What lies about Schmidt?” he askded. “There are a host of open secrets in Silicon Valley — which all the insiders know, and gossip about. Valleywag’s role is to reflect that conversation, and open it up to the wider world.”

    Battelle responds:

    If Nick truly intends to step it up over at Valleywag by improving its financial and business reporting, I am sure he will exercise a long held journalistic skill: understanding the business model of the subjects he’s writing about before presuming to judge them, and contacting us for comment before publishing rumor or speculation.

    Oooh burn.

  • Dell Creeps Higher
    Posted by on November 13th, 2006 at 10:36 am

    Dell‘s (DELL) earnings report is due on Thursday. The stock has gradually been creeping higher. Today the shares reached a five-month high. Does the market know something? It’s hard to say, but at least we haven’t had an earnings warning yet. The Street is expecting earnings of 24 cents a share, although no analyst is willing to go higher than 26 cents a share. This will be interesting to see.

  • My Favorite YouTube Spots
    Posted by on November 11th, 2006 at 5:11 pm

    Since you probably have too much free time on your hands, I’d thought I’d share with you some of my favorite You Tube videos.
    Miles Davis & John Coltrane
    Hendrix at Woodstock
    Carson/Dragnet Skit
    The Little Lebowski
    Bunnies Doing Jaws
    The Brady Bunch Variety Hour
    Johnny Cash 1959
    Grateful Dead on Playboy After Dark
    Goal for Scotland
    Groucho at His Best
    Frances Gumm

  • Cyrus McCormick
    Posted by on November 11th, 2006 at 6:51 am

    Did you ever wonder how a third-world country became the world’s largest economy? The answer is easy: people like Cyrus McCormick.

  • The Way, Way Back Crowd
    Posted by on November 10th, 2006 at 1:47 pm

    Jack Ciesielski, who runs the terrific AAO Blog, notes the growing use of non-reliance 8-Ks. These are federal filings that tell shareholders that all the previous filings were sort of…wrong. The latest member of what Jack calls the “way, way back crowd” is Peet’s Coffee & Tea (PEET). The funny things about Peet’s is that they’re restating everything back to 1996, five years before they went public.