Diamonds and Dogs

11/26/19

Big week for retail. Dicks (DKS) is up 19% while Best Buy (BBY) is up 11% following better than expected earnings. Dicks also raised guidance for the full year. Black Friday is this week. Online sales are projected to rise 20.3% to $7.5 billion. Cyber Monday sales are seen rising 19% to $9.4 billion this year. It could be a good holiday.

Old tech going the wrong way. The former blue-chip tech titans like IBM and Hewlett Packard are not participating in this year's rally. Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) is down 10% back in a trading range that started in February following earnings. Earnings actually beat expectations on in-line guidance, but sales fell 9.2% to $7.21 billion below expectations. HP is blaming the miss on longer sales cycles for bigger deals because of economic and geopolitical uncertainty. But maybe customers want to work with more innovative companies like Amazon, Google or Microsoft.