Quick Take: Stop, Think

Gee whiz! Is it safe to come out yet?

In the 48 hours since Home Depot (NYSE: HD) released earnings, I count more than five dozen articles on it, rushed out by every media outlet, from Big Orange's own PR department to AP, BusinessWeek, and Reuters.

And those are just the headlines fed through Yahoo! Finance -- I shudder to think how many dozens more litter the virtual pages of MSN Money, Google Finance, and other financial sites. Does anybody take the time to pause and think about news anymore? Or do they just put metaphorical pen to ethereal paper as soon as the headline flashes across their LCDs?

It's an awful lot of writing about news that shifted the stock's price a hardly staggering 2%, which could have been summarized in half a dozen alliterative words: Sucky sales, pathetic profits, great guidance.

But it does give me a great idea for the title to Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) upcoming earnings report, if it plays out like last time: Lousy Lowe's Laps Laggard (Home Depot).

Hey, alliteration takes you only so far.