Rosenberg Daily: So Much for the Positive Earnings Story

Resistance has clearly set; the fact that Wal-Mart would decline 2% on a day of supposedly good retail sales data attests to the view that a whole lot of good news got priced in during this latest whippy market rally. Dell’s miss on the revenue line may also have served as a reminder that this current earnings season, while hardly a disaster, had a completely different complexion in terms of breadth, sales “beats” and guidance compared to its predecessors over the prior eight quarters (Staples, for example, lowered guidance yesterday). And Capital One’s data showing late-payment credit card rates inching up to 3.73% in October from 3.65% calls into question the sustainability of credit quality improvement that we have seen since the recovery began more than two years ago.