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Home Depot's Sales Rebound Muted by Inflation in Fuel and Lumber
Home Depot Inc.'s sales rebounded last quarter as Americans took on more remodeling projects, but rising costs for lumber and transportation are weighing on profitability.
[...] Home Depot and its smaller rival Lowe's Cos. are often seen as proxies for the health of the housing sector because property owners spend more on their homes when they believe values are rising. But for several quarters there's been increasing concern that years of robust home-price gains are cooling. For its part, Home Depot has continually said that a shortage of available homes in many markets would actually underpin higher home-improvement spending.
[...] Even as the overall housing market looks to be cooling, several trends are driving demand for home-improvement products. A shortage of available listings has slowed property purchases, causing some owners to opt for sprucing up their homes instead. Additionally, more people are staying longer in their homes, which also supports the uptick.
The labor market also plays a role: A strong run of hiring, coupled with moderate wage growth, has boosted Americans' wherewithal to spend money on fixing up their homes. Spending on home improvement -- which accounts for about 38 percent of private residential construction outlays -- surged 13.8 percent in June from a year earlier to reach $221 billion, according to Commerce Department data. Going forward, the job market may continue to propel housing and remodeling demand. But potential hurdles include a pickup in mortgage rates, a shortage of skilled workers for building and remodeling projects, and rising costs for construction materials such as lumber, which is affected by tariffs.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @06:48AM (4 children)
Did they ditch the Bush-loving asshole that was the CEO of Home Despot? He talked down to investors, never a good idea, and fucked over his employees, only sometimes a good idea. But in any case, I never will shop there, given the political orientation of the corporation. Lowe's all the way! Costco over Sam's Slavery! Hee-Haw! But now to the real issue. Will submissions like this grow the membership of SoylentNews? Have we even cracked uid of 7000? Why are there no submissions? Where are the aristarchus submissions? I want something about the alt-right, not something about the hardware-right!
(Score: 4, Funny) by turgid on Wednesday August 15 2018, @12:44PM
There's nothing like a good Aristarchus submission to get the alt-wrong and their sympathisers all worked up into an entertaining tantrum.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday August 15 2018, @04:38PM (1 child)
I made a Sub about our wonderful Economy. About the 157,000 NEW JOBS in July. That's according to my Bureau of Labor Statistics, my BLS. Straight from the horse's mouth. Can we call that a mouth? Why not! But, rejected by @janrinok because of "political bias" and "unnecessary '!' characters in your headlines." He calls that character. And he told me, the Editors won't read my Subs because of that. The Exclamation Point -- I call it Exclamation Point -- says, "this is exciting!" And who wants to read news that isn't exciting? Very boring people, that's who! And by the way, how do they know an Exclamation Point is unnecessary without reading the Sub? They run so many stories with a Question Mark in the headline. And there's always someone that says, "oh, law of question marks in headline, the answer is always NO." They know the answer. So probably the question was unnecessary, right? Question Mark is OK, apparently it's OK. But Exclamation Point, not OK? Dumb!!!! And it's a pathetic excuse to not read, to reject without reading. Very easy, I assume, for an Editor to change an Exclamation Point to a Question Mark. Or to a nothing. It's called editing. And isn't that a big big part of what you have Editors for? But, they spend a lot of their time finding stories. And submitting stories. Because sometimes they like their own Subs better than ours. I guess it's like children. Your woman gets pregnant, always you wonder, "will it look like me?" And when it doesn't, that's one of the worst things that can happen. For a guy or for a couple. Although, some guys like it. That's their hobby. Some guys play polo. Some -- like me -- collect very valuable paintings, or play a spectacular game of golf. And some share their women with other men. Raise other men's children, they call it Cuckoldry. I call it cuckoo!!!
Political bias, I'll tell you about political bias. You had a guy that called himself OriginalOwner. Remember him? It wasn't long ago, maybe you remember. And he made so many Subs from Think Progress. From the World Socialist. From Alternet. The websites of our alt-left. Way way left, beyond the Dems if you can believe that. And some of them got posted. One of the last ones that got posted, @janrinok put that one up. And he edited it, he wrote something like, "all governments lie." And the story is, supposedly my economists lied and something my Bureau of Labor Statistics said, changed around by the very far left websites, supposedly proves they lied. Very dumb story, economists aren't psychics. And they're not scientologists. They're entertainers, they don't know what will happen in our economy. They're guessing. You can go to Coney Island, you can ask Zoltar the robot. The psychic robot. And his guess will be just as good as an economist's. And possibly Zoltar will guess wrong. Do you call it a lie? I wouldn't call it a lie. He says something that comes true, very entertaining. It doesn't come true, not so entertaining. That's all. What Zoltar says is strictly for entertainment purposes. And it's the same with economists. But, my economists predicted something that didn't come true. And it's news, it's SoylentNews.
You're supposed to believe what my BLS says -- the alt-left spin on what my BLS says -- when it makes me look bad. Sub accepted, edited, and posted. But when my BLS say something that makes me look fabulous, the Editors don't read it. Don't edit it. And don't post it. Because, political bias. Because, Exclamation Point!
Well, maybe I should close BLS. And let Home Depot tell the story of our beautiful Economy. Because the Fake SoylentNews says all governments lie. Uses the info from my BLS to "prove" that. And BLS costs a lot of money. I can close it. And give that money back to our Corporations & other taxpayers. Which will be fantastic for our economy.
OriginalOwner, he stopped his Subs. And he stopped tweeting. Our thoughts & prayers are with him. But possibly he got hurt very badly. He's alt-left, their rallies can be very violent. Lot of problems with alt-left violence. With Black Identity Extremism. But some fine people too. On many sides.
And @aristarchus still comes to your website. He still tweets. Very few tweets. Nothing like he used to. But I don't see his Subs. Sometimes I look at the Subs Queue -- so nice that they put the link to that. And I used to see his Subs. Very easy to see because they would sit for a LONG time. Now I don't see them. And possibly the Editor Robot rejects them immediately. It rejects mine after a week or two. Something like that. Or possibly he stopped making them. Because he's busy with Documents. Like I am. Or maybe his mental finally went kaput. He never talked about it. But I can tell he's crazy. Challenged, if you want to be politically correct. They call it challenged, right? He said the Editors accepted 12% -- I think it was 12% -- of his Subs. And even the 12% was TERRIBLE. In my opinion, terrible. And so many people said, "this guy is crazy, why did you put that story up?!"
He's alt-right, he's not one of their best people. I can tell you're a big fan of him, but our alt-right has much better guys. Look at @TrumpBikers [twitter.com], there's some fabulous guys. Very strong, very tough. And 200 of them visited me at my Southern White House on Saturday. To celebrate the anniversary of Unite the Right. MUCH BIGGER CROWD, frankly, than at Unite the Right 2. Because of me. Believe me, if I'd gone to Unite the Right 2, it would have been a tremendous crowd there. It was very tiny, I heard it was 20 guys from our alt-right. And more from our alt-left. Bedminster, 10 times as many. And our alt-left, unfortunately, didn't come. We united the right -- me and Bikers for Trump. Big success. While Jason K. failed horribly. But, we wish him luck. We wish him success. Last year he was very successful, he made a terrific splash. Next year, who knows, maybe I'll come to his event. And bring tremendous ratings. I'm the Ratings Machine, it's amazing. I'm amazing!!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday August 15 2018, @04:54PM
(cont) Here's the link to my BLS. With the VERY POSITIVE news about the 157,000 NEW JOBS in July. They call it nonfarm. Because our Farmers, they have a lot of work in the spring. A lot in the summer. Some in the fall. Not much in winter. It goes up and down, up and down with our beautiful Seasons. Like we do when we make whoopie. The in & out. So my BLS looks at the other jobs. They didn't forget our wonderful Farmers. They leave them out for a reason. So folks won't think, "oh, it's up, oh it's down, oh it's up again" just because we're having seasons. The facts is, it's up and down, up and down. But the alternative facts is, it's up, up, up. Good news. Great news.
But, some folks don't want to hear good news. Especially not from my government. They go, "oh, all governments lie." And they like bad news, no matter how Fake or politically biased. Very negative attitude. Sad! bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/nonfarm-payroll-employment-increased-157000-in-july-2018.htm [bls.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @12:08AM
i am not sure if the fact that he 'loved bush' is a problem.
i love bush, too, but the telly savalas look is good as well.