Wall Street Greek: Business News Preview: Caterpillar, Texas Instruments, ICSC & Bernanke Testimony

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The tone of trading turned this morning thanks to a better than expected result from Caterpillar. The company's profits came in three times higher than analysts' expectations.

Business News Preview

ICSC Weekly Same-Store Sales

Weekly same-store sales improved in the period ended July 18, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. The latest check showed sales rose 0.5% week-to-week, versus the prior week's shrinkage of 0.9%. We've noted improvement in this report over recent months, and a clear stabilizing pattern. The measure had become as sensitive to weekly weather as anything else, signifying to us that normalized sales levels were about even to the prior year. However, on a year-to-year basis, sales fell 0.3% in the July 18 period, versus the -0.7% drop in the prior week period. Consumer Sentiment has recently dropped as well, giving further evidence that rising unemployment is already acting as a drag to economic recovery. Your "V-Shaped" recovery is flattening out, and looking more like a "U", and many would argue, a "W" or "M", once inflation kicks in.

Bernanke Testimony

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke hits the "Hill" today to give his semi-annual monetary policy testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. Once known as the Humphrey-Hawkins annual testimony, the meeting now competes with regular interrogations of the Fed Chief, and has lost some of its "Must-See TV" appeal. We wouldn't miss it though!

Later today, the House committee will debate the "too big to fail" problem. Bernanke speaks with the Senate Banking Committee tomorrow, as part of his two-day ordeal.

Texas Instruments Results

After the bell Monday, Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) reported weak year-over-year numbers, but the market may find hope in its sequential quarter improvement. Indeed, Texas Instruments executives noted that the bottom seems to be in, and that customers are ordering in a more normal manner to reflect real demand. The panic of the first quarter spread far, as seen in that statement and the numbers. Still, the TXN team noted few signs of broader economic improvement as yet.

TXN posted EPS of $0.20 in its second quarter, beating the tempered analysts' consensus for $0.18, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenues of $2.46 billion also surpassed expectations for $2.41. "The Greek" learned through my Wall Street time that both analysts and corporate executives get better at managing expectations as the economic trend is understood.

Still, the numbers were not good at all on an absolute basis, and that may be reflected this morning, as the stock is down more than 2% in the pre-market. Do not fail to recall, however, that the entire industry got a lift last week on Intel's results (Nasdaq: INTC), and so some expectations had been built into this report.

EPS Schedule

The rest of today's schedule highlights reports from Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), Schering-Plough (NYSE: SGP), Apple (Nasdaq: APPL), Merck (NYSE: MRK), Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), UnitedHealth (NYSE: UNH), Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD), United Technologies (NYSE: UTX) and more.