Today started out strong with a weaker dollar ahead of tomorrow's FOMC meeting. We have a slew of data coming out the rest of the week and tomorrow's commentary on securities purchases and liquidity programs should likely beat out the notion that rates are still staying at near-zero percent.

Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 9,829.27 +50.41 (0.52%)
S&P 500 1,071.63 +6.97 (0.65%)
Nasdaq 2,146.30 +8.26 (0.39%)

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On Tuesday morning, Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) issued a cautious earnings outlook for the coming year. On a more positive not, the home-improvement giant actually expects same-store sales to increase, bringing an end to several years of same store sales declines.

LOW's announcement was accompanied by a reiteration of its expectations for the fiscal year. It expects to open 66 stores this fiscal year, and as many as 45 in the next fiscal year (which starts on January 30). For the coming year, LOW believes it will earn $1.24 to $1.34 per share with revenue growth of 3% to 4% and a same-store sales rise of roughly 1%. The current estimates from the Street call for earnings of $1.34 per share and a 3% revenue increase.

Home improvement retailer Lowe's Companies (NYSE: LOW) will be reporting its second quarter earnings before the market opens on Monday, and there are some positive indicators that it may have been a good quarter for the company.

Over the past year, weak consumer confidence has put a strain on Lowe's, as home owners who have worried about job security and a weak housing market have put off home repair projects. As a result, Lowe's stock fell as low as $13.00 back in March, but has rebounded nicely over the past few months to its current trading price of $22.71.

What? Buy The Home Depot (NYSE: HD) after it reported Q1 EPS of 35 cents -- it beat the First Call Q1 EPS estimate of 29 cents – but failed to raise guidance? Indeed, the Buy rating has been generated. Here's why:

Home Depot's Q1 sales fell 9.7% and same store sales declined 10.2%. Those are pretty bad totals for key metrics, and of course the stock sold off some Tuesday, with short-term players taking profits. However, unless you believe the U.S. housing market and economy is likely to remain in recession for more than two quarters, those low sales totals sat up easier comparisons for next year, and the stock pull-back represents a buying opportunity.

So, the story doesn't start off so well. Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) issued its Q1 numbers earlier today, and right off the bat, beginning at the top line, you see that net sales declined over 1%. Then you notice that profit on a dollar basis plunged over 20%. Earnings per share? That also took a dive of over 20%.

Then you look at the stock. And you say to yourself, "what's going on?" As I write this, with less than three hours to go in the trading day, shares of Lowe's are trading almost 10% higher! On excellent volume, too. As you might have thought, an earnings beat was lurking somewhere in the plot of this particular tale. Lowe's earned $0.32 per share in Q1. According to Trey Thoelcke's earnings preview, the market thought that only $0.25 could be achieved. This differential is helping to fuel the buying.

Home-products retailer Williams-Sonoma (NYSE: WSM), which runs such retail brands as Pottery Barn and West Elm in addition to its namesake chain, issued Q4 numbers on Tuesday. Well, they weren't spectacular. Surprised? No, I'm sure you weren't. I mean, when you sell stuff for homes, you've got to expect that you're going to see some weakness. And there's plenty of it here.

Revenues decreased almost 27% during the quarter, and earnings per share on an adjusted basis dropped over 70% to 31 cents. That beat estimates of 16 cents per share, according to Reuters' analysts, but forgive me if I don't jump up and down over that performance. And what about same-store sales? They were mighty bad. On an overall basis, they went down by over 22%.

Home improvement retailer Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) said Friday its fourth-quarter profit fell 60% from a year ago, as consumers continued to shy away from big-ticket items, such as appliances and cabinetry.

Lowe's said it earned $162 million, or 11 cents per share, in the quarter ended Jan. 30 -- down from earnings of $408 million, or 28 cents per share, last year. Revenue fell 4% to $9.98 billion as same-store sales, a key measure of performance since it tracks growth at existing stores rather than newly opened ones, dropped 9.9%.

Masco Corp. (NYSE: MAS), which manufactures and installs building materials, announced its fourth quarter numbers Wednesday afternoon, falling short of analyst estimates.

Analysts had expected to see the company show a loss for its fourth quarter of 5 cents, but a tough sales environment pushed the company's loss much wider than expected, with a reported 18-cent loss per share.

President Obama is speaking as I type this post. He is making many promises, and I believe he will make every effort to see them through to the best of his ability.

Regardless of his successes and failures in the coming years, we now have the focus of Washington and Wall Street working on preventing us from slipping into a depression and guiding us out of a year-old recession. Main Street is also doing its share to correct past mistakes, and they are making the biggest sacrifices.

These sacrifices come in the form of lower wages, cutting back on spending, living on fewer resources than they may have had available to them only a short while ago. We go on this journey together and many conjecture that things will get worse before they get better. I think this is only partially true. Unemployment appears to be rising but most of our problems seems to be known to us even if not resolved.

Well, seems like Lowe's Companies, Ic. (NYSE: LOW) did much better than expected during the third quarter. And I was apparently too pessimistic in my earnings preview. The call was for $0.28 per share. The home-improvement retailer beat expectations by $0.05 per share, according to Thomson Reuters estimates. Hey, I tip my hat to management.

But I wouldn't buy the stock just now (unless, of course, you have a very long-term horizon, are willing to ride out the bear market, and intend on improving your cost basis through dollar-cost-averaging). My reasoning is simple: total sales increased only 1.4%, and same-store sales decreased nearly 6%. It's that bad drop in the comps that really has me worried. All retailers are suffering through lousy comps right now, and I think sales are destined to remain weak.

Yet, the market seems to be saying something else to me. Lowe's saw its shares rise over 4% on Monday, on good volume, and on a bad day for the major indexes, too. Is the market saying that all the bad news is priced in? You know, I understand the earnings game and how the market loves it when a business beats estimates, and certainly a $0.05 beat is cool, but I'm not sure that better prices are ahead for those who follow Lowe's and its stock. Consumers just won't be spending enough to justify the buying seen in Lowe's equity yesterday.

Home improvement chain Lowe's Cos. (NYSE: LOW) is moving sharply higher in today's premarket following the release of strong second quarter earnings. Boosted by higher revenues, the North Carolina company reported a 9% jump in quarterly profits.

The company earnings of 67 cents per share, a nice upside surprise from the 61 cents analysts had expected. This was all the bulls needed to push the stock higher. So far this morning, shares of Lowe's are up 6.1%, looking to open up $1.63.

Not surprisingly, the company did have one weakness, and that was sales from stores open a year or more, which was directly related to the slowdown in the housing market. Analysts had factored that in already, and the actual decline was "only" 2.6%.

Welcome to the tenth installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a new weekly column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

Last week I looked at Wal-Mart Stores' (NYSE: WMT) store count and possible market saturation in several areas of the country where it operates. Is the retailer spreading itself too thin these days? Can it keep up growth by just adding stores or does it need to find ways to increase sales in existing stores?

Today, let's look at how home improvement mega-retailers Lowe's and The Home Depot have cut into Wal-Mart's business. These "Big-Box" home improvement retailers offer a dizzying array of merchandise to spruce up that home. There are category overlaps with quite a bit of what Wal-Mart offers, so is the world's largest retailer up to the challenge? Let's find out.

Last week, commodity and company earnings sent some seriously mixed signals.

Gold, historically a pretty good indicator of excess money flowing through the economy, took off, jumping over $20 an ounce. Gold has been in a tight trading range the past year or so, a sign that Fed policy was correct by halting rate increases. However, it is tough to read what last week's rally was all about.

Housing data, conversely, an important component of the overall economy, was simply awful. Reports from the home improvement retailers -- Home Depot (NYSE: HD) and Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) -- were exceptionally weak, with same store sales down 5% to 11% depending upon the month you wanted to look at.

However, macro data such as employment and wage growth remain good, but employment is a lagging, not a leading, indicator.

With that said, in addition to gold, a lot of other commodities took off during the week.

In the tech world, semiconductors, one of the most hypersensitive economic indicators, fundamentals have been deteriorating since November 2006 and there is little evidence this market has bottomed.

Signals are too confusing to be comfortable with the market. Most indexes have had great rallies since the fall. It is time to take some money off of the table. There is little evidence that 1st quarter earnings will be that good.

In addition, another consideration is a seasonal factor. The Fed tends to add more money to the economy in the second half of the year and slows down money supply growth in the first half of the year. This is a reason why the market's performance tends to be weakest during the April through September time period and stronger from October through March.

These mixed signals tell me to start pruning your portfolio. We are in for a bumpy ride and it will be nice to have some cash on the sideline to do some buying when market volatility and investors' fear increases.

Home Depot Inc. (NYSE:HD) today reported fourth-quarter results that were in-line with Wall Street's expectations. The bad news is that they weren't very good.

Net income fell 28 percent to $925 million, or 46 cents per share, from $1.3 billion, or 60 cents, the Atlanta-based company said in a statement. Excluding a 4-cent charge related to severance given to former Chief Executive Robert Nardelli, profit was 50 cents. Revenue rose 4 percent to $20.3 billion. Analysts expected profit of 50 cents on sales of $20.8 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

Particularly depressing for Home Depot was the 6.6 percent decline in same-store sales. Total retail sales fell 2 percent to $17.4 billion. HD Supply, which is may be spun off, was the only bright spot. Its sales soared 64 percent to $2.9 billion because of acquisitions.

"Reflecting the challenging housing market, our 2006 retail results were disappointing," said Frank Blake, chairman & CEO. "We may not be able to impact the housing market or general economic conditions, but we know that we can improve our performance relative to our overall market share. That will be a central point of emphasis for us in 2007 and beyond."

The company said it will provide details of its turnaround plan and earnings guidance for next year at its February 28 investors' meeting.

It would have been better for Home Depot to release the earnings at the same time as the investors' meeting. Wall Street shouldn't be kept waiting more than a week to hear how Blake plans to revamp Home Depot.

The Black & Decker Corporation (NYSE: BDK) announced this morning that it was lowering its fourth quarter guidance to $1.30-$1.35; consensus estimates were $1.85. This caused the stock to plummet 8.9% in trading today to $79.20 around 11:30 a.m.

The company gave a few reasons for the lowered guidance:

• Weak conditions in the United States
• Decreasing orders from key retailers
• Pressure from the housing market and weaker demand for discretionary goods going into 2007

Decreasing orders from key retailers -- are they referring to Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) and Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE: LOW)? -- during the holiday season is a scary sign, not only for Black & Decker, which should obviously be avoided at least until they give 2007 guidance in January, but for the home improvement industry in general. Caution required here.