Wal-Mart, Home Depot upgrade outlooks

NEW YORK (AP) — Consumers may not be confident, but the stores that sell to them certainly seem to be.

Wal-Mart and Home Depot, two of the nation's largest retailers and bellwethers of the U.S. economy, today joined a string of other merchants that have boosted their profit outlooks for the year despite a flow of bad economic news that suggests they have no reason to be optimistic.

TJX Cos., which owns TJ Maxx and Marshalls, Macy's Inc., Kohl's Corp., and Nordstrom Inc. have all raised their outlooks in the past week.

Retailers' results are a closely-watched barometer of how willing Americans are to loosen their purse strings, which is important since consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of the economy.

But at a time when families are being squeezed by rising costs, high unemployment, scant pay raises and a weak housing market, the positive forecasts seem to fly in the face of other economic indicators.