Here are some highlights from this past week's earnings coverage on BloggingStocks:

• Ark Restaurants Corp. (ARKR) shares declined after Q4 earnings fell short of consensus expectations.
• Azz Inc. (AZZ) Q3 net income fell more than expected but the company reaffirmed its earnings outlook.
• Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (BBBY) reported strong Q3 results, sending shares to a new 52-week high.
• Best Buy Inc. (BBY) declined to lift its earnings forecast despite strong December sales, send shares lower.
• Constellation Brands Inc. (STZ) lower Q3 earnings topped expectations and revenue declined as well.

Today's stock market was up more than it was not throughout the trading session, yet the feeling was more of an up-day after better than expected retail data and after more and more data points to a decent jobs figure for Friday's unemployment and non-farms payrolls data. Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 10,607.69 +34.01 (0.32%)
S&P 500 1,141.65 +4.51 (0.40%)
Nasdaq 2,299.00 -2.09 (-0.09%)

Top Analyst Upgrades/Downgrades

Shares of Lennar Corp. (LEN) surged Thursday after the Miami-based homebuilder reported a surprise profit for the fourth-quarter of 2009, its first in two years.

For the three months that ended in November, Lennar posted earnings of $0.19 per share, compared with a year-ago loss of $5.12 a share. Fourth quarter results included $1.34 per share related to the reduction of a deferred tax asset valuation allowance primarily due to a NOL carryback, offset by a $0.58 per share charge related to valuation adjustments and other writeoffs, and a $0.31 per share charge related to valuation adjustments to land the builder intends to sell or has sold to third parties.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect for-profit education provider Apollo Group Inc. (APOL) to start of the new year right when it reports fiscal first quarter 2010 results this week. During the three months that ended in November, Apollo's subsidiary, Apollo Global, saw management changes and its University of Phoenix was recertified to participate in Title IV programs.

Apollo Group is expected to report that earnings rose 22.8% from a year ago to $1.45 per share. Revenue for the quarter is expected to total $1.2 billion, which is 25.9% higher than a year ago. So far, the forecast is for similar year-over-year growth of EPS and revenue in the second quarter. This Phoenix-based company has topped earnings estimates in the past five quarters, by as much as 13 cents per share.

Today was one of those up-days that might be a disappointment to many bulls because the gap-ups were not met by follow-on buying throughout the day. A better weekly joblessness report may have been muted by Asian central banks intervening to protect the US Dollar.

Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 9,786.79 +61.21 (0.63%)
S&P 500 1,065.31 +7.73 (0.73%)
Nasdaq 2,124.41 +14.08 (0.67%)

Top analyst upgrades and downgrades
Top market rumors
Top day trader alerts

In his 'Master Trading' portfolio, Bernie Schaeffer uses fundamental, technical and sentiment metrics to select trades. Here's a trio of ideas from Schaeffer's Investment Research.

"I have initiated a long position in Office Depot (NYSE: ODP). Price action for ODP has been strong, with the equity gaining more than 108% year-to-date.

"Recently, the equity pulled back to its 20-day moving average. There is heavy out-of-the-money put open interest for ODP. An unwinding of the short positions related to this open interest could provide a tailwind for the stock.

Here are some highlights from last week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:

• Activision Blizzard Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) shares rose after it reaffirmed its full-year earnings and sales outlook.
• Automatic Data Processing Inc. (NASDAQ: ADP) will have low double-digit EPS growth, predicts one analyst.
• AutoZone Inc. (NYSE: AZO) posted a decline in earnings but a small rise in sales, sending shares lower.
• Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY) posted better-than-expected Q2 earnings and higher revenue.
• CarMax Inc. (NYSE: KMX) rallied to a new 52-week high after topping analysts' Q2 earnings expectations.
• Carnival Corp. (NYSE: CCL) reported better-than-expected Q3 results and raised its full-year guidance.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer does not agree with one group's idea the housing market will be hit by a glut of foreclosed homes.

Until last night, when I thought of "Amherst" I thought of a school that my eldest daughter debated applying to. Not anymore. Nope. Now there's a new Amherst in town -- Amherst Securities. Last night this firm, which trades mortgage-backed securities, became the new expert on housing when it issued a report saying that we were going to have another leg down because the market is about to get hit by 7 million foreclosed homes.

Downbeat. Horrible. Sell the homebuilders. Sell the banks. Huge wave of foreclosures coming.

Yeah.

Got it.

Shares of homebuilder Lennar Corp. (NYSE: LEN) have been taking a beating today following weaker than expected earnings for its fiscal third quarter.

Traders have pushed shares of the company down over 5% after the company reported that it had lost 97 cents per share for the period. This was a much wider loss than the 46 cents per share that analysts had been expecting to see from the Miami based company.

U.S. stock futures were lower Monday morning. While the Lennar (NYSE: LEN) results, which showed housing market improvement, and Dell's (NASDAQ: DELL) acquisition of Perot Systems for $3.9 billion both contributed to improved sentiment, investors still took a breather to take some profit following the recent rally and ahead of this week's Federal Reserve meeting and as world stocks decline.

Overseas, world stock markets were modestly lower Monday and oil prices slipped below $71 a barrel Monday due to high crude stockpiles and weak demand.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says don't heed the pundits -- allow yourself to believe things are improving.

Skeptical, or impossible? That's how I am posing the dilemma of the "pull through" argument whether it involves Ford (NYSE: F) (Cramer's Take) and "Cash for Clunkers" or Hovnanian (NYSE: HOV) (Cramer's Take), Lennar (NYSE: LEN) (Cramer's Take), Toll (NYSE: TOL) (Cramer's Take), KB Home (NYSE: KBH) and Pulte (NYSE: PHM) (Cramer's Take) and the $8,000 tax credit.

Right now any time there is a stimulus program of any sort, the pundits/media/money managers all decide the most important single issue isn't what it will do to the numbers, or whether it will work at all, but what will it do to the "pull through." How much of future sales will it "steal"?

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the action that is linked to the futures markets, such as oil, is distorting rational analysis.

Maybe one day we can escape the commodity linkage and begin to trade on the fundamentals again, something that seems more distant now than any time I can recall. We are totally marching to gold, to oil, to copper, and not the fundamentals.

Throughout the era in which China has become a superpower and hedge funds have become the super arbiters or what goes up or down, we have been stuck with this fairly bogus linkage that corrupts trading and makes a mockery out of some of the most important financial analysis out there, the actual attempts to discover what's really happening at companies.

Lennar (NYSE: LEN) has had one of the most impressive rebounds of all the home builders. The stock has been up as much as 340% since bottoming last November.

Wall Street's current consensus for Lennar's earnings this year is a loss of $2.88. In my opinion, that's too low. I think Lennar will have little trouble surprising Wall Street analysts later this year.

Lennar is a good momentum buy.

The past few years haven't been what you might call a happy time for shares of home building stocks. Consider that the Homebuilders Exchange-Traded Fund (NYSE: XHB) plunged from $40 per share in early 2007 to just $8 per share earlier this year.

Since March, however, things have improved. There are signs that the housing market is getting back on its feet -- or at least, declining less slowly. Existing home sales recently registered their biggest gain in more than a decade. Seasonally-adjusted single-family building permits are up 27% since bottoming in March, while single-family housing starts have increased five straight months and are up 36% since March.

Most investors got slammed last year, down 50% or more in their investments. Didn't matter if they owned stocks or real estate, they got hammered. Many have to start over. And if they're near retirement, it's scary. Years of patient investing wiped out, gains that were made over a long time disappeared frighteningly fast.

But now it's time to begin fresh, to rebuild. What's the safest way to regain some or all of the losses without suffering another wipeout?