Afternoon Review

Following up on the dividend discussion from yesterday, this post on the WSJ.com blog MarketBeat commented on the S&P 500’s unusually high dividend yield and suggests that the yields is likely to come down.

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Earnings reports have been mixed the last few days, but almost all companies are projecting lower profits in the coming quarters. I will provide a summary of earnings in Friday's post.

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Standard and Poor’s, Fitch, and Moody’s Investors Service are under intense scrutiny for putting profit gain before accuracy. These articles (here and here) are must reads for insight into the underlying problems in these ratings agency.

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A study by Bernstein Research showed that U.S. sales of store-brand household and personal products rose 8.9 percent in the four weeks ended Oct. 4. By contrast, sales of similar products increased by 2.3 percent at Procter & Gamble (PG) and 1.3 percent at Colgate (CL). In the year-earlier period, sales of private-label products increased 2.4 percent, according to Bernstein.

• Private-label brands increased market share in 15 out of the top 20 household and personal-products categories, according to a study by Bernstein Research.
• Consumer-products makers increased prices by as much as 16 percent this year to cover higher expenses for oil used in plastic packaging and pulp used for toilet paper, tissues, and paper towels.
• Shoppers are more likely to “trade down” when it comes to diapers and anything made of paper. That disproportionately hurts Kimberly-Clark (KMB), which specializes in paper products.
• Interesting Bloomberg article on the subject.

Peter Lazaroff, Junior Analyst