5 Big-Box Stocks to Watch This Week: HD LOW CSCO WMT TGT

Retailers racked up a score of victories last week, with names like Kohl's Corp. (ticker: KSS) and Nordstrom (JWN) delivering big results and big price performances.

Cue Buzz Killington.

Friday was hampered by a weak U.S. retail report that showed flat sales in July, which helped the markets close out the week with a thud. The U.S. dollar took a dip, the charging Standard & Poor's 500 index and Dow Jones industrial average were stopped in their tracks ... and a host of people invested in retail stocks shook their fists at the sky.

Data, it seems, has a cruel sense of timing. Wal-Mart Stores, Home Depot and a host of other retailers are on the earnings schedule this week. And as an added kicker, many of them are in the midst of strong uptrends that are just begging for a little negativity to derail the train.

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Against that backdrop, let's take a look at the major players in the earnings crosshairs for the next few days:

Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). After a dumpster fire of a 2015, Wal-Mart is putting together a very real turnaround.

Yes, shares are higher by 20 percent through eight months after losing 30 percent last year. But this isn't just a reversion to the mean or investors buying value -- Wal-Mart is producing. In its first-quarter report, for instance, WMT topped expectations on just about every front. Revenues beat (despite being weighed down by a strong dollar) and comps were double estimates. Profits were better than expected, albeit lower -- but that's thanks to spending that's setting Wal-Mart up for more success in the future.

Wal-Mart is starting to pump more money into its business via pay raises for more than 1 million workers and a $1.1 billion spending effort to bolster e-commerce. And that doesn't include the $3 billion it just plunked down to pick up Jet.com and CEO Marc Lore, who will become the new tsar of Walmart.com.

The result? Analysts at Jefferies say those investments are really starting to pay off, and that "we are now in the early innings of the North American store turnaround."

You could argue that WMT stock is due for a cooldown, and that Thursday morning's earnings report could do the trick. But Wal-Mart has some aid in the form of a low bar. Analysts expect a 5 percent drop in profits to $1.02 per share, and revenues are expected to tick just 10 basis points higher.

Target Corp. (TGT). Wall Street doesn't seem to think much of Target, either, but that's largely by design.

When it reported its miss in the first quarter, TGT also set expectations for a limp second quarter, projecting earnings of $1 to $1.20 per share, off as much as 18 percent from last year. Analysts are mostly splitting the difference, looking for $1.12 per share on a 7 percent decline in revenue.

And if the problem has anything to do with bathroom stalls, neither Target nor analysts have gotten the memo. Instead, the blame for Target's struggles has fallen to issues such as Target's sale of its in-store pharmacy business to CVS Health Corp. (CVS), as well as a deep-discount environment right now across the retail landscape.

But the tide appears to be changing. Target shares are up by double digits since bottoming out in June in the wake of the company's post-earnings collapse. And analysts appear to be upbeat about the company's digital sales growth (up 23 percent in the first quarter), expansion of its food category and cost cuts. Combine those factors with the company's strict expectations management, and TGT could be set up for a beat Wednesday morning.

Home Depot (HD) and Lowe's Companies (LOW). Wal-Mart and Target aren't the only rivals on tap this week. Home improvement retailer Home Depot lays out its books on Tuesday morning, followed by Lowe's early Wednesday.

The two have been closely tethered in 2016, though Lowe's slightly pulled away after first-quarter earnings; shares are up 7 percent for the year to Home Depot's 3 percent. And for the most part, Wall Street seems to view both through the same rose-colored glasses.

Economic data has been singing homebuilders' tune of late, doling out good news on the employment and housing fronts. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Labor Department issued a robust July jobs report; the 255,000-job surge slaughtering economists' estimates for 180,000. And in June, housing starts climbed 4.8 percent, including 4.4 percent for single-family homes. In fact, single-family starts are up more than 13 percent through the first six months of the year.

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All that good news has bled deeply into the second-quarter outlooks for Home Depot and Lowe's. The former is expected to grow earnings 15.2 percent to $1.97 per share on revenues of $26.48 billion, up 6.7 percent from last year. The latter is staring down 18.3 percent profit growth to $1.42 per share on the back of a 5.7 percent revenue bump to $18.34 billion.

Cisco Systems (CSCO). One major report off the retail path this week is Cisco Systems, with the network solutions specialist slated to give its fiscal fourth-quarter report after Wednesday's bell. But plenty of investors will be watching nonetheless, given that CSCO is a major bellwether of corporate IT spending.

Speaking of spending, Cisco has been doing more than its fair share of it over the past year, gobbling up 11 companies including cloud security firm CloudLock, cloud search tech outfit Synata and cloud management company Cliqr.

Noticing a trend?

Cisco is looking for any way it can -- focusing primarily on cloud and security solutions -- to compensate for declines in its core switching business. Switching revenues declined 4 percent in its fiscal second quarter, then another 3 percent in its third quarter.

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CSCO shares are up more than 13 percent for the year. As long as Cisco can keep its switching losses to a minimum, it should be able to beat a low bar set by Wall Street analysts. Cisco is expected to earn 60 cents per share -- just 1.6 percent more than it did in the year-ago quarter -- on a slight revenue decline to $12.57 billion.

Kyle Woodley is managing editor of InvestorPlace.com. Investing is his second love, with Ohio sports teams as his first. Naturally, this has warped his general perception of love, sparking (among other things) an unnatural affection for the Haddaway hit, "What Is Love?" Follow him on Twitter @kylewoodley.