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Wal-Mart Stores reported a third-quarter profit Thursday that beat analysts’ estimates while its store sales fell in the period amid a "difficult" selling environment.

Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), the world’s largest retailer, posted earnings of 84 cents per share for the three-month period ended Oct. 31. That is up from 77 cents a share a year ago and was boosted by inventory reductions and other cost-cutting measures.

Analysts were expecting profit for the quarter of 81 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

The retailer’s net sales in the period were $98.7 billion, up 1.1% from a year ago.

However, Wal-Mart’s same-store sales declined 0.4% in the quarter. Same-store sales, which measure sales at stores open at least a year, are a key measure of a merchant’s performance.

"The sales environment continued to be difficult this quarter, but customer traffic is up throughout the company," Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke, said in a statement.

Wal-Mart also issued a disappointing same-store sales forecast for the fourth quarter, which includes the holiday shopping period that typically is the most critical selling season of the year for retailers.

This was the second consecutive quarter that Wal-Mart has reported a same-store sales decline at the same time that the company maintains that it is stealing market share away from its competitors with its recession-friendly low prices.

Given Wal-Mart’s dominance in the retailing industry, and the fact that more than 200 million consumers shop at its stores every week, the seller is often seen as a barometer of the health of the consumer and of the economy no credit check payday loan.

Therefore, its same-store sales weakness, combined with a tepid same-store sales guidance for the fourth, could fuel concerns that consumer spending is not likely to rebound any time soon.

Consumer spending is a vital driver of the economy, fueling two-thirds of all economic activity.

In a pre-recorded call to discuss the company’s results, Duke said he’s confident that trend will continue even after the economy rebounds.

"When the recession is behind us, we believe that our customers will continue to shop with a new interest for value," Duke said, adding that he expects both Wal-Mart discount stores and the company’s Sam’s Clubs warehouse stores to benefit in the long run.

Most merchants log 50% or more of their profits and sales for the full year in the two months of November and December.

Still, Wal-Mart said it expects fourth-quarter same-store sales to be flat, plus or minus 1%, compared to a 2.4% gain in the same period a year ago.

For the full-year, Wal-Mart slightly adjusted its profit range higher, saying it now expects earnings to be between $3.57 to $3.61 a share from its earlier guidance of $3.50 to $3.60 a share.

Analysts currently expect the retailer to post a full-year profit of $3.58 a share, according to Thomson Reuters

– CNNMoney.com staff writer Aaron Smith contributed to this report. 

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Costco Wholesale Corp is hoping that consumers are becoming more comfortable making purchases as the No. 1 U.S. warehouse club operator heads into the year-end holiday shopping season.

“We still are cautious but are keeping our fingers crossed that people are buying a little bit,” said Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti on Wednesday.

He made the comments at the retailer’s investor day, which was held in its new store in Manhattan.

Costco’s monthly same-store sales fell through much of this year as shoppers shunned purchases of its discretionary merchandise, like jewelry and clothes. Unlike a year ago, when gasoline prices rose to record levels, Costco received no recent sales boost from the price of gas.

But same-store sales returned to positive territory in September and October, marking an improvement from August, when same-store sales fell 2 percent. The retailer has also said it is seeing demand return for products besides food, like sporting goods, clothes and cameras.

Costco also said at the meeting that it plans to ramp up store openings in the next five years. While the majority of those new stores will be opened in the United States, it said it sees potential to expand its store base in Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Australia.

R.J. Hottovy, an analyst with Morningstar, said he was pleased with what he heard at the meeting, and it reinforced his view that Costco has a strong business model.

“In the downward economic cycle that we’re in, I think the value proposition that Costco provides, it really sells itself,” Hottovy said payday cash advance loans.

OPENING PLANS ACROSS THE GLOBE

Costco operated 559 warehouses as of August 30, the end of its fiscal year. That including 406 clubs in the United States and Puerto Rico; 77 in Canada, 21 in the United Kingdom, seven in Korea, six in Taiwan, nine in Japan, 32 in Mexico and one in Australia.

It expects to open 15 to 20 stores this current 2010 fiscal year, up to 20 stores in each of its fiscal years 2011 and 2012, and more than 25 in fiscal years 2013 and 2014.

In Japan, Taiwan and Korea, where business is performing well, Costco said it has the capacity to operate 100 stores. In Australia, where it recently opened its first location, it has the capacity to operate roughly 20 stores, it said.

CEO Jim Sinegal said Costco does not plan to raise prices to boost margins. Instead, he said Costco will be smarter about the products it stocks on shelves to reduce costs — like making round jars square so that more can fit on a shelf or reducing the size of packaging.

“We prefer to make our additional margin by being smarter, by buying better and being more efficient in our business,” Sinegal said.

He also said a reasonable goal for Costco’s operating profit margin would be about 3.5 percent. While that is slimmer than the 4 percent margin he discussed during the boom years, it is still fatter than some analysts have expected. 

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Insurance giant AIG has made progress on its restructuring and will likely be able to repay a taxpayer bailout and buy back much of the government’s stake in the company, Moody’s Investors Service said on Monday.

The Moody’s statement was a rare expression of optimism for American International Group Inc, which has received up to $180 billion of federal aid and is now 80 percent owned by U.S. taxpayers.

Moody’s said AIG’s restructuring plan still relies heavily on government support, but if its operations and global financial markets continue to stabilize, the company likely can generate enough value to repay the government.

The vote of confidence sent AIG’s hard-hit shares up 3.7 percent to $37.52. The cost of insuring $10 million of AIG debt for five year fell to around $732,000 annually, down $10,000 from Monday, according to Markit Intraday.

AIG posted its second straight quarterly profit last week, helped by a recovery in the value of its investments. But its underlying business remained weak. For details click on

The quarterly results “show continued stabilization of the core insurance operations despite challenging market conditions,” Moody’s said.

With the government likely to recoup its investment, it has incentive to continue supporting AIG and its various creditors, Moody’s said bad credit payday advance. The agency affirmed AIG’s long-term credit rating of A3, the seventh-highest investment grade, with a “negative” outlook.

Credit spreads on AIG’s 8.25 percent notes due in 2018 tightened by 0.15 percentage point on Tuesday, to 7.51 points over U.S. Treasuries, according to MarketAxess.

AIG’s $180 billion of federal aid includes more than $80 billion in loans. The company has sought to sell major business units to help repay the government, but has struggled to find buyers willing to pay enough.

Since the appointment of former MetLife Chief Executive Robert Benmosche as AIG CEO in August, the company has focused on rebuilding the value of some businesses previously slated for sale, Moody’s said.

“We believe that the slower approach to restructuring could help AIG to generate more favorable values from its business portfolio than would be the case under rushed asset sales,” it said.

(Reporting by Dena Aubin; Additional reporting by Joe Giannone and Karen Brettell; editing by Walker Simon and John Wallace)

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The Federal Open Market Committee in its statement November 4 left unchanged the language that its ultra-low rates would be kept for "an extended period". By not even signaling an end to the current era of easy money, the central bank runs the risk of further inflating asset and commodity prices and sinking the dollar.

The Fed’s mandate is to keep inflation and employment stable. It’s hard to see how avoiding bubbles — and the crashes that accompany them — shouldn’t be central to its mission.

By the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978, the Fed must maintain long-run growth, minimize inflation and maintain price stability. As the events of 2007-09 demonstrated, in order to achieve these goals it helps to avoid bubbles, the bursting of which makes prices unstable and causes unemployment.

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan used to claim that it was impossible to recognize a bubble in progress, but that does not preclude the Fed’s responsibility to prevent them from developing.

Currently, stock prices are up 50% from their lows, oil prices are above $80 a barrel and the gold price has surged to close to $1,100 an ounce. Global monetary conditions have been exceptionally accommodative for over a year, with Chinese M2 money supply up 29.3% in the year to September, for example.

All of which suggests the substantial probability of a bubble developing, whether or not it can be detected in progress. The bursting of such a bubble, at a time of large global budget deficits, could prove highly destructive to economic growth and employment.

So the Fed’s lack of action — either in word or deed — seems incautious. It may believe that raising interest rates would abort the incipient U.S. economic recovery and that removing quantitative easing could cause a liquidity crisis given the huge U.S. budget deficit.

However, removing the language promising to keep interest rates low for an "extended period" could have no real economic effect, but would warn the markets that the Fed is aware of the potential bubble. Sometimes two words can make all the difference. 

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Gold investors are partying like it’s 1849.

The price of the yellow precious metal hit yet another all-time high Wednesday. At nearly $1,100 an ounce, you have to wonder just how much higher gold can go in the next few months. Is it $1200? $1300? Heck, is $1500 out of the question?

The Gold Rush of 2009 has been stunning to watch. Unlike some prior gold price spikes, the "good" news about gold’s recent rise is that it does not appear to be due to worries about an imminent meltdown of the financial system. Gold rallied in early 2008, for example, just as Bear Stearns was about to collapse.

Instead, gold has rallied recently as the dollar has weakened. Gold, along with other metals, such as silver and copper, and commodities, like oil, are benefiting from inflation fears.

Investors around the world have fled the dollar due to worries that the massive amounts of money pumped into the U.S. economy by Congress, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve will eventually lead to inflation.

Prior to this week though, many experts thought that the bump in gold had more to do with momentum traders taking advantage of these fears and simply riding a hot hand. But there is now growing evidence that real demand for gold is playing a role in the run as well.

Gold, unlike silver, copper and many other metals, does not have that much of an industrial use. But gold has often been considered the safest of safe havens when the dollar declines. As a hard, tangible asset of value, some investors buy gold as an alternative to the dollar.

The International Monetary Fund announced on Monday that it sold a huge chunk (200 metric tons) of gold to the central bank of India. Now there is chatter that other nations may also want to bulk up on gold.

"More central banks may look to move into gold and out of the dollar. There are some rumblings that it could be like a series of dominos now that India has taken the first step," said Darin Newsom, senior analyst with Televent DTN, a financial markets research firm based in Omaha.

Partly for this reason, Newsom said that it’s not out of the question for gold to go as high as about $1,400 an ounce in the next year or so.

Central banks don’t appear to be the only big gold buyers. Mining companies are doing so as well.

With gold prices continuing to rise, some producers have announced plans to stop hedging as much (if it all) against the possibility of falling prices. To do that, producers are buying back gold from what is known as their hedge books.

Barrick Gold (ABX) said Monday that it bought back 1 million ounces in October, while AngloGold Ashanti (AU) also announced that day that it intends to reduce the size of its hedge book by 800,000 ounces a year over the next five years quick payday loan. More gold producers may follow suit.

"Gold producers are going to need to close their hedge books because for every dollar that the price of gold goes up, they lose a lot of money," said David Beahm, vice president of economic research with Blanchard & Company Inc., a New Orleans-based investing firm that specializes in gold and other precious metals.

This demand, coupled with more worries about inflation, is likely to lead gold significantly higher, Beahm said. He thinks gold could hit $1,150 by the end of this year and $1,500 by the end of 2010.

"There is no doubt that there will be inflation. It’s not a matter of if but a matter of when. And when that happens gold will spike again," he said.

Now of course, it’s probably a good idea to still have a healthy dose of skepticism about how much higher gold can go. After all, it was only a year ago that oil spiked above $140 a barrel and many commodity bulls were predicting that crude would hit $200 before long. That didn’t happen.

If the economy is really in recovery mode, the Fed will eventually start raising interest rates from their current level of near zero. Once it does that, some of the inflation pressures should subside. That could take some of the air out of the gold run.

But there is also a good chance that gold could gain even more ground over the long haul even if the global economy gets back on track and the dollar strengthens again. It’s simple Economics 101.

Marshall Berol, co-manager of the Encompass fund, a mutual fund that is currently investing heavily in commodity-producing companies, said many investors don’t realize how much time and effort it takes to produce gold.

And instead of just watching gold trends from afar, Berol said he and his fellow co-manager like to visit projects of companies the fund owns to get a better sense of how supply is shaping up. They have a trip planned to Chile and Argentina next week, for example, to look at mining projects run by Exeter Resources (XRA), one of the fund’s holdings.

So even if demand doesn’t remain as robust as it is now, Berol thinks a low supply of gold should mean that prices will continue to move up.

"On a day-to-day basis, people talk about gold going up because of the dollar or oil," he said. "But the difficulties in finding significant new deposits is overlooked. Not only do you have to find it but determine how much there is and how you are going to get it out. Bringing new mines to production takes years."

Talkback: Are you buying gold? Selling gold? How much higher do you think gold prices could go? Share your comments below. 

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Ford Motor reported a surprise profit for the third quarter Monday, helped by a bump in sales from the Cash for Clunkers program, a reduced cost structure and problems at its U.S. rivals.

The company also announced plans late Monday to raise $3 billion in order to further boost its balance sheet.

The only major U.S. automaker not to file for bankruptcy this year earned $997 million, or 29 cents a share, compared to a loss of $161 million, or 7 cents a share on that basis a year earlier.

Excluding special items, Ford reported a profit of $873 million, or 26 cents a share, in the period. Analysts had been forecasting a loss of 12 cents a share for the quarter on this basis. Ford said it was the first pre-tax operating profit since the start of 2008.

In a separate announcement, Ford said it will issue $1 billion in common stock and $2 billion of debt that will be convertible to common shares. The company said it will start issuing them beginning next month. The automaker also said it hopes to extend the maturity of its revolving credit facility by two years to 2013.

"We expect the moves will enhance Ford’s automotive liquidity and over time reduce the company’s debt burden, providing an additional cushion given the still uncertain state of the economy," said Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally in a statement.

The company said cost cutting during the past year and an improved outlook for sales leads it to believe Ford will be "solidly profitable" in 2011, excluding special items.

That’s the most bullish outlook Ford has offered investors since it started losing money in 2005. The company had previously said it was looking for break-even or better results that year.

Turning the corner. The guidance raised hopes that the company may have turned the corner on nearly five years of losses for its key North American auto operations.

"Our third quarter results clearly show that Ford is making tremendous progress despite the prolonged slump in the global economy," said Mulally.

The company said it lowered its structural costs by $1 billion compared to a year earlier, with about half of that improvement coming in North America.

While Ford did not need federal assistance or a bankruptcy reorganization as rivals General Motors and Chrysler did, it was able to win concessions from its unions that resulted in a $300 million structural cost reduction. Ford also said it paid about $200 million less for materials and commodities in the quarter.

Ford still faces some potential problems in the near term. In a vote announced Monday afternoon, the United Auto Workers union rank and file rejected additional contract concessions sought by Ford management, including a freeze on entry level wages.

And Ford said it expects sharp declines in European sales in the next year partly because an even larger Cash for Clunkers there this year will steal demand from future months.

Still, Mulally told investors that the company remains hopeful it could be profitable in 2010, not just by 2011, and that the longer time frame in the new guidance is a way of being cautious.

"The reason we couched it that way is we’re just not sure about the strength of the recovery," Mulally said. Ford will detail further guidance on 2010 profits when it reports fourth-quarter results in January.

Digesting the details. Results in North America were helped by much stronger sales than a year earlier, particularly in the United States, where the company was one of the prime beneficiaries of the Cash for Clunkers program that gave buyers up to $4,500 if they traded in a gas guzzler for a more fuel efficient vehicle.

Even without the Cash for Clunkers program, which lifted the whole industry out of the doldrums, Ford made gains on many of its rivals during the quarter.

During the quarter, Ford’s U.S. market share rose by 2.2 percentage points to 14.6%. Ford benefited from steep market share declines at GM and Chrysler in the wake of their bankruptcies, but it also posted bigger market share gains than Japanese rivals such as Toyota Motor (TM) and Honda Motor (HMC).

Shares of Ford (F, Fortune 500) gained more than 8% Monday.

The company reported overall revenue of $30.9 billion in the quarter, down $800 million from the same period a year ago due to a decrease in revenue at its Ford Credit unit.

Ford said that global auto sales rose $100 million from the third quarter of 2008, to $27.9 billion. It sold 1.23 million vehicles worldwide, up 5% from a year earlier, and its average net pricing also improved along with its sales volume. Auto revenue in North America soared by $2.9 billion, or 27%, to $13.7 billion.

Ford also said it made money on its auto operations, and that it reported positive cash flow of $1.3 billion from its auto businesses. The company had been burning through significant amounts of cash every quarter since the second quarter of 2007 as it suffered from years of ongoing losses.

"While we still face a challenging road ahead, our [company] transformation plan is working and our underlying business continues to grow stronger," Mulally added.

Ford’s automotive unit earned $446 million in the quarter, compared to a loss of $2.9 billion in the year-earlier period, as the company’s core auto operations in North America returned to profitability for the first time since the first half of 2005. 

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CIT Group has met at least one of the hurdles necessary to file for a prepackaged bankruptcy, sources said, bringing the commercial lender one step closer to the fast bankruptcy process it is seeking to lower its liabilities and get back to health.

Holders of about 90 percent of its unsecured bonds have approved the prepackaged bankruptcy, two sources familiar with the matter said late Friday. The company needed two-thirds approval.

But the company is still counting ballots to see if half of the voting bondholders have approved the deal, a necessary condition, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The 101-year old company is widely expected to clear that hurdle, and could file for bankruptcy as soon as this weekend.

CIT had been working hard to win bondholder support for its plan to restructure, and earlier Friday announced key agreements with creditors, including support from Carl Icahn, who had previously been the main opponent to the company’s plans.

CIT also announced an agreement with Goldman Sachs Group that would reduce a $3 billion credit line to $2.125 billion but, critically, keep the line open during a bankruptcy.

“It looks like everything is pointing to a prepack,” said Adam Steer, an analyst at CreditSights in New York. “Their best option is to turn off the lights and work their balance sheet down. It’s pretty clear at this point.”

The prepackaged bankruptcy plan involves giving most bondholders new debt worth 70 percent of the face value of their old debt, plus giving them new CIT shares fast payday loan no faxing.

Current preferred shareholders, including the government’s $2.33 billion paid to CIT under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, will only receive money if there are funds left over after repaying debtholders. Common shareholders will be wiped out.

CIT warned last week that if investors did not support its restructuring efforts, it could end up filing for bankruptcy without a plan for how to fix itself. Exiting bankruptcy could take a long time and destroy much of the company, CIT’s management said in a presentation.

“We’re all glad this is behind us and that we can now consummate this transaction and hopefully make bondholders some more money,” said Jeff Werbalowsky, chief executive of Houlihan Lokey, the adviser to CIT bondholders.

“The company did the right thing in putting this behind us, and that’s where this needs to be for a quick and successful restructuring.”

CIT had sought to get support from bondholders to exchange their old debt for new securities, or to agree to a pre-packaged bankruptcy. The votes were due by the end of Thursday, October 29.

The debt exchange was widely seen as doomed to fail, given the number of competing interests involved. 

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