More of the Same

The market continues to trace the underbelly of the broken trendline from July. I said last week the market was heading to a breaking point and the market continues to maneuver in that direction. It can't go much further without showing its hand. S&P is close to its September high, wasn't able to get there today and you have a cluster of technical signals going each direction. Earnings of course happen to start in earnest after the bell tomorrow. Not an accident, the market has placed itself to break higher or lower in a major way. Friday and today really don't mean much with holidays both internationally and at home. Banks all closed today and volume didn't exist today or Friday. Probably changes soon.

Europe continues to hemorage and the trade contiues to be to sell dollars and buy eruos. The entire investing world does not make sense. Besides Latvia and Sweden, EU country Romania seems like the government is about to collapse. At the same time the Netherlands had to take over DSB Bank after an old school bank run caused it to fail.

Black & Decker raised guidance today and the stock spiked. I decided to take a look and more of the same from last quarter, cutting your way to prosperity.

Earlier this year, the company said it would cut 1,200 jobs and lower base salaries of top executives, as well as end contributions to retirement programs because of economic weakness. Black & Decker also cut base salaries for other U.S. workers by between 2.5 percent and 5 percent.

Partly because of that cost-cutting, the power-tool maker now expects earnings of about 91 cents per share, up significantly from its prior profit forecast of 35 cents to 45 cents per share.

but

Despite what Black & Decker called "better-than-expected sales," the company said it still expects sales to fall 23 percent compared with the same quarter last year.

why?

Revenue is coming in better than expected partly because of earlier shipments leading up to the holidays that hadn't been anticipated until the fourth quarter.

They figured out the government CARS program. Pull forward demand to make things look rosy.

But, it works like a charm. Black & Decker was up 7.5% today.