Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Stocks have struggled this week to cross the year's high set in
April, though they did briefly move past that level intraday on
Wednesday. Minutes of the last Fed meeting coming out this
afternoon may not be enough to do the trick either as the central
bank's thinking has likely evolved since then. The bigger than
expected Japanese trade deficit numbers may also give investors a
pause as it brings the global growth worries front and center.
The Fed had a clear easing bias at the time of the July 31/August 1
FOMC meeting, but decided against taking any concrete action to get
validation from economic data. The minutes of that meeting coming
out this afternoon will give us more clarity on the extent of
support within the FOMC for more quantitative easing at the time.
But that support has likely softened since then given the
relatively more robust economic data in the following days,
particularly on the Retail Sales and Industrial Production fronts.
As such, we will have to wait for Bernanke's Jackson Hole speech
later this month to get more clarity on the Fed's latest thinking.
But things will definitely be a lot clearer by the time the Fed
meets again in mid-September as by then we will have the August
non-farm payroll report in addition to a host of other key economic
readings.
On the earnings front, we got a sup-par report from
Dell (
DELL
) after the close on Tuesday, with competitive pressures and
economic woes prompting the once-mighty PC maker to guide lower for
the current quarter and rest of the year. Results from
Hewlett-Packard (
HPQ
) coming out after the close today may not be much different as it
too has been struggling for a while now. In other reports,
Abercrombie & Fitch (
ANF">ANF
) came short of expectations again as the once-edgy retailer
continues to lose ground to rivals.
Sheraz Mian
Director of Research
DELL INC (DELL): Free Stock Analysis Report
HEWLETT PACKARD (HPQ): Free Stock Analysis
Report
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