Home Depot, J.C. Penney, Best Buy headline a big w

Home Depot, J.C. Penney, Best Buy headline a big week for retail earnings
With the mixed third-quarter results of retailers from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT +0.04% to Macy’s Inc. M -0.86% last week, investors are looking for more signals about the state of consumers and merchants’ holiday outlook with this week’s flood of major retail earnings reports from Home Depot Inc. HD -0.35% to Best Buy Co. BBY +0.55%

So far, among 52 of the 120 U.S. retailers it tracked that have reported their results, they exceeded estimates by 0.9% on average, below the long-term-average of a 3% gain, according to Retail Metrics. Overall, retailers’ third-quarter profit is expected to rise an average of 5.1%, above the 3.4% gain of the S&P 500, its data as of Nov. 14 showed. http://blogs.marketwatch.com/behindthestorefr...atest_news