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Several economic indicators coming out this week will test investors on how confident they are that consumers will continue to open their wallets. The Producer Price Index (PPI), a measure of wholesale prices, will be reported on Tuesday. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) will follow the next day. Then we round out the week with the number of Housing Starts and Building Permits. The PPI and CPI are excellent indicators of inflation in the short term while the housing industry is obviously in desperate need of some buyers to come forward and help revive the new homes/construction industry… just ask Home Depot that reported weaker than expected quarterly sales last week.

The economic indicators being reported will probably take a back seat to the slew of earnings being reported this week. The following is a very abbreviated list. There are many more companies reporting earnings this week. I have chosen a few notables, many of the following are components in various indices, and there are a few locally based companies in the Greater Cincinnati, Ohio area that I would like to direct your attention to (stock’s ticker symbol in parenthesis):

July 17th:
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
The Coca Cola Co. (KO)
Wells Fargo (WFC)
Yahoo! (YHOO)

July 18th:
Abbott Laboratories (ABT)
Altria Group (MO)
Cintas Corporation (CTAS) - a Cincinnati, Ohio area based company (Mason, Ohio)
EBay (EBAY)
JP Morgan Chase (JPM)
Pfizer (PFE)
Allstate (ALL)
Washington Mutual (WM)
Wesbanco (WSBC)

July 19th:
Capital One (COF)
Fifth Third Bank (FITB) - Cincinnati, Ohio based company
Harley Davidson (HOG)
Honeywell (HON)
PNC Financial Services (PNC)
Sherwin Williams (SHW)
The Hershey Co. (HSY)
Union Pacific (UNP)

July 20th:
Citigroup (C)
Caterpillar (CAT)
Wachovia (WB)
Whirlpool (WHR)
Sonoco (SON)

Harley Davidson has one of those stock ticker symbols that is unique in that it helps identify with the company’s products, culture, and customers. Beyond the name being “cute” there is really no significance to the special ticker symbol.

I would draw your attention to Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Coca Cola (KO) and Union Pacific (UNP) reporting earnings this coming week. Billionaire and respected investor Warren Buffett is fond of these particular companies. He regularly enjoys drinking Diet Coke and in this month’s (August 2007) issue of Smart Money it mentions that he has nearly $4 billion invested in the railroad industry (including Union Pacific). Mr. Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway owns approximately 8.6% of Coca Cola as of the end of March 2007.

Here’s looking to The Week Ahead!!! I hope you have a great week regardless what the market does. As always, I welcome your comments and feedback…

After taking the past few days off I wanted to catch up and post my usual The Week In Review as well as look forward to The Week Ahead. A lot has happened since I last wrote so pardon me if I skip over some things and give you a very brief summary this week…

There wasn’t anything scary about Friday the 13th this past week unless you are a Bear in the market. The Dow broke its previous all-time high and even flirted with 14,000 this past week. During Friday’s trading the DJIA index rose to within 70 points of this next milestone only to pull back slightly and settle at 13,907 (a 2% gain on the week!)… other indices were moving significantly higher as well. The S&P 500 was up 1.4% to 1,552.50. The NASDAQ was up 1.5% in line with the S&P 500, ending the week at 2,707.

The week ended on an excellent note for the indices but early in the week appeared to be singing a different tune. On Tuesday, Home Depot and Sears reported lower than expected earnings. Home Depot blamed the sluggish housing market for the decline. I don’t entirely buy into Home Depot’s reasoning. I expect Lowes (NYSE: LOW) to post better numbers than the Home Depot did. Lowes reports its second quarter earnings on Monday, August 20th. Although I wouldn’t expect Lowes to completely sail past the analysts’ estimates of $0.61 per share quarterly earnings, I do think it will meet or slightly exceed them.

Considering the negative news coming from Home Depot earlier in the week, the market was much more upbeat Friday when General Electric posted better than expected quarterly earnings sending the stock to a five year high above $40 per share. The GE quarterly earnings even over-shadowed the 0.9% drop in retail sales that the US Department of Commerce reported on Friday for the month of June. This nearly 1% drop followed the May increase of 1.5%. I think the GE results were more of a surprise to investors than the slight drop in retail sales, so although these sound like conflicting results being reported, the GE results are for an entire quarter - not just the month of June like the Department of Commerce’s report, and furthermore the GE reported results were much more unexpected than a very slight decrease in the retail sales for the month of June.

Here’s looking to The Week Ahead!!!

As always, I appreciate your comments and feedback…