A Look Ahead at Earnings Next Week

With the S&P 500 grasping at 1070, and yet another "90% day" as the student body has run back to the left ("risk off" stampede), let's take a look ahead at the key reports next week; both for the greater market and what we have our eyes on.  The next 3 weeks are the heart of the earnings season, and some of our holdings begin to pop up next week.


Names the market will focus on

• Monday - IBM (IBM), Texas Instruments (TXN)
• Tuesday - Apple (AAPL) [the normal huge beat, and massive lowball for the following quarter], Goldman Sachs (GS) [trading revenue has been bad for Citi and JPMorgan as Q2 2010 actually was so bad it even hurt the investment banks, Meredith Whitney thinks even Goldman had trouble trading this quarter], Yahoo (YHOO) [I have no idea why the CNBC crew devotes so much attention to this dinosaur ... shall we analyze Lycos and Excite while we are at it?]
• Wednesday - Baidu (BIDU) [should continue to benefit from Google's neutering in China, but are expectations/valuation too high?], EMC Corp (EMC) [fantastic performance of late - is to storage what Cisco is to networking], Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold (FCX) [hedge fund favorite], Morgan Stanley (MS) [see Goldman Sachs], Qualcomm (QCOM) [cell phone world, been a disaster of late - should have low expectations], Wells Fargo (WFC) [probably not as important now that we have results for JPM and BAC - should be very similar]
• Thursday - 3M (MMM) [slow and steady multinational], Amazon.com (AMZN) [chart has been weak of late, still a rich valuation], American Express (AXP), BB&T (BBT) & PNC Financial (PNC) [two of the huge regional banks just below the "big 4" oligarchs], Caterpillar (CAT) [top dog - pun intended - in construction equipment], Microsoft (MSFT) [yawn], Nucor (NUE) [steel, which shows a lot of signs of weakening of late], United Parcel Service (UPS)
• Friday - McDonald's (MCD)

Names of specific interest

• Monday - fund holding HDFC Bank (HDB),  Atheros Communications (ATHR) [I remain befuddled on this one, if it can report anything close to what is promised it should bounce - so cheap]
• Tuesday - fund holding VMWare (VMW) [we've cut back almost the entire position to lock in profits as this is a high valuation, high beta name],  Harley Davidson (HOG) [I like to view this one through the prism of the over spending American consumer; thus far HOG business has really not bounced back much despite "green shoots"], Juniper Networks (JNPR) [poor man's Cisco], Peabody Energy (BTU) [the big fish in coal space]
• Wednesday - fund holding F5 Networks (FFIV), fund holding Netflix (NFLX) [high valuation, high beta like VMWare]  Eaton (ETN) [always like to keep an eye on this decent sized pure play international industrial], Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), Manpower (MAN) & Robert Half (RHI) [view for comments on temporary employment marketplace]
• Thursday - fund holding Dr Reddy's  Labs (RDY), Bucyrus (BUCY) [always a good read on the global commodity picture, any comments on China slowdown would be interesting], Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) [the "Apple" of restaurants], Riverbed Technology (RVBD), Skyworks (SWKS), Mosaic (MOS)
• Friday - Ford (F)