Home Depot Inc. (HD): Today's Featured Retail Loser

Home Depot (HD) pushed the Retail industry lower today making it today's featured Retail loser. The industry as a whole closed the day up 0.9%. By the end of trading, Home Depot fell 29 cents (-0.6%) to $51.87 on heavy volume. Throughout the day, 17.1 million shares of Home Depot exchanged hands as compared to its average daily volume of 11 million shares. The stock ranged in price between $51.61-$52.50 after having opened the day at $52.11 as compared to the previous trading day's close of $52.16. Other company's within the Retail industry that declined today were: QKL Stores (QKLS), down 20%, Acorn International (ATV), down 17.6%, China Nepstar Chain Drugstore (NPD), down 7%, and Liquidity Service (LQDT), down 5.4%.

The Home Depot, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a home improvement retailer. The company's stores sell building materials, and home improvement and lawn and garden products to do-it-yourself, do-it-for-me (at D-I-F-M), and professional customers. Home Depot has a market cap of $78.02 billion and is part of the services sector. The company has a P/E ratio of 19.2, equal to the average retail industry P/E ratio and above the S&P 500 P/E ratio of 17.7. Shares are up 16.4% year to date as of the close of trading on Thursday. Currently there are 15 analysts that rate Home Depot a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and nine rate it a hold.

TheStreet Ratings rates Home Depot as a buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, impressive record of earnings per share growth, compelling growth in net income, revenue growth and notable return on equity. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally poor debt management on most measures that we evaluated.

• You can view the full Home Depot Ratings Report.

On the positive front, E-Commerce China Dangdang (DANG), up 13.9%, ValueVision Media (VVTV), up 8.2%, Pharmerica Corporation (PMC), up 7.2%, and Cache (CACH), up 6.5%, were all gainers within the retail industry with Dollar General Corporation (DG) being today's featured retail industry winner.

• Use our retail section to find industry-relevant news.
• Or find some new ideas from our top rated stocks lists.

For investors not wanting singular stock exposure, ETFs may be of interest. Investors who are bullish on the retail industry could consider SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) while those bearish on the retail industry could consider ProShares Ultra Sht Consumer Goods (SZK).

• Find other investment ideas from our top rated ETFs lists.

For more information on Home Depot Inc. click any of the following:

• Home Depot Inc. Stock Price

• Home Depot Inc. Analyst Ratings

• Home Depot Inc. Key Stats & Profile

• Home Depot Inc. Earnings

• Home Depot Inc. Ratio Comparison

• Home Depot Inc. Growth Rates

• Home Depot Inc. Balance Sheet

• Home Depot Inc. Cash Flow

• Home Depot Inc. Income Statement