jim s.

Internet Hoax Gooses Stock Market

LEH capital infusion = LEH shareholder dilution. This action, together with their "testing" of the discount window last week deosn't speak to their financial strength.

Houses will get more affordable in the coming years and stocks will seem less affordable when the earnings start to tank, as surely they will.

Pulte Homes Up 11% in Spite of Bad Earnings

Jeez, man, just look at that chart. The consumer is just starting to fall apart. How in the heck is all that housing inventory going to be burned through and new home buyers coming into the market in the next six months. Or year?

The Upside of Low Housing Starts

I agree that another steep drop off in housing starts is sensible and necessary but lets remember that homebuilders make their living building homes. If the homes that they're able to build are selling for less, that doesn't bode too well for their profitability. The question is how many of them can sit on their hands for a year or two or more without the creditors knocking on their door.

While one can look at the starts and permits numbers and say they're an indicator the builders are doing the rational thing, had the numbers shot up instead I think homebuilder stocks would have shot up too.

Sears Holding's Lampert Continues Great Brand Lineup

todd su,

Thanks for pointing out that SHLD doesn't release monthly numbers. But the effect is certainly that they don't show up in the business press.

And given today's announcement, and previous earnings releases, I can see why they play it close to the chest; no need for a steady stream of bad news.

As to the claim of a rock solid balance sheet, I see that their net tangible assets have gone from $7.8B to $5.7B over the past three quarters, while their cash has gone from $3.4B to $1.4B in the same time period. Could it be that SHLD is signing its own death warrant by repurchasing shares at elevated prices?

Then there's the issue of the underlying business. It keeps going down, down, down. There's nothing in the Craftsman line that competes on quality with the name brands at HD and Lowes, except hand tools. Appliances? Whatever. Lands End? A fine name, to be sure, but on our mall L.L. Bean has just opened up a store and it's a doosey. There's just no comparison between Lands End section in Sears to the L.L Bean store, which is like an outdoor experience right there on the mall. While this certainly can't be happening at many Sears stores, it's sure a stick in their eye here in Albany, NY. Though L.L. Bean may regret their expansion soon enough too.

Sears Holding's Lampert Continues Great Brand Lineup

Another thing I forgot to mention is Sears and Kmart's increasing irrelevancy in busimess press. I've noticed this several times; a story about the progress of retailers (of which there have been many recently) will list how things are going at WMT, TGT and then maybe KSS and some apparel retailers, etc., but rarely do they mention SHLD stores. For example, just looking at linked in stories from Yahoo! today, there's a bunch under the Summary pages for WMT, TGT, M, etc. Not a one for SHLD.

From my own perspective, Sears' assets are its tools (hand tools, not power tools which are by and large not premium quality), power equipment and appliances. In all those categories they have stiff competition from HD and Lowes, not to mention the smaller players like True Value. On the rest of their inventory, the big boxers are in a full court press.

Frankly, I don't see how they can keep it up.

Sears Holding's Lampert Continues Great Brand Lineup

I am short SHLD. They keep losing business to WMT, TGT and Kohls and have the Kmart albatross around their neck. Though their P/E is a tad lower (now) than either of those uber-efficient big boxers, I'm guessing it will suffer in the coming year.

I stop in regularly to area Kmarts and the one Sears and am rarely impressed. The former have the stench of death about them and the latter is almost as depressing. This stock, though well off its highs, is probably going to suffer disproportionately if the US consumer pulls back. Then it's up to Lampert to play the derivatives market in order to make up the slack.

Bringing in Snapper to compete side-by-side with their Craftsman lawn machines doesn't strike me as something that's going to pull SHLD up by the bootstraps.

Rate Freezes Won't Solve Foreclosure Problem

If CFC provided this info I would take it with a grain of salt. My first question would be how does this affect CFC? My second question would be how old is this data?

But doesn't the curtailment of income fly in the face of these great employment numbers we keep getting? I mean, foreclosures are way up in the past few quarters but the economy just keeps adding jobs. The only way I see this making sense is if people are losing good paying jobs and finding lower paying jobs to replace them. Then they fall behind on the mortgage.

I think many more foreclosures are due to resets today than that table shows. Not that people should be bailed out, mind you. That's just obscene.