The Fool's Look Ahead

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Monday
The new trading week starts with Navistar (NYSE: NAV) rolling in. The trucking giant is coming off a strong third-quarter report in which it raised its near-term guidance. Now it's time to see how those fundamentals held up over the past three months. Wall Street expects a profit of $0.82 a share out of Navistar, a reversal of a year-ago loss.

Tuesday
Global Payments (NYSE: GPN) checks in on Tuesday. Analysts see an improving quarter out of Global Payments. They expect earnings at the payment-processing and money-transfer specialist to rise 19% to $0.57 a share. Global Payments has topped expectations in seven consecutive quarters, so the trend is its friend heading into Tuesday's report.

Wednesday
A few retailers step up on Wednesday, including Bed Bath & Beyond (Nasdaq: BBBY) and Family Dollar (NYSE: FDO). Of those two chains, which one do you think will post growing earnings? That's right -- thriftiness is in, and Wall Street projects Family Dollar's earnings to grow. The same can't be said for the home furnishings superstore.

Thursday
It's showtime at Apollo Group (Nasdaq: APOL) on Thursday. For-profit educators are back in fashion. E-learning specialist Grand Canyon Education (Nasdaq: LOPE) had to settle for an IPO price of $12 a share last month, and it's now trading more than 50% higher. Wall Street sees Apollo's profitability growing by 18% to $0.98 a share for the quarter, so let's see whether it moves to the head of the class.

Friday
KB Home (NYSE: KBH) closes out the week with its report. It's a home builder, so you know the company will post a deficit. The key will be to see whether the company sees home prices stabilizing in 2009. Until that happens, it will be hard to move existing homes, much less talk potential homeowners into paying up for new construction.

Until next week, I remain,
Rick Munarriz