(Best Buy's) quarter was disappointing. While (Best Buy) is clearly focused on reducing expense growth, this issue will continue to weigh on fourth-quarter results, thus limiting the upside in a solid environment.

He probably wants to crank it back a notch.

You've got ying and yang going on here. You've got a decent company-specific story and confidence with the strategy, but you also have an incremental worsening situation on the housing front and no visibility into any good news.

Even Home Depot's generally positive meeting yesterday was somewhat marred by the release of poor December housing starts.

Best Buy is one of the strongest retailers in the U.S. today. It is dominating in its core big-box consumer electronics format and has three-to-four more years of continued store expansion, which will add over $2 billion to revenues annually.

It was clearly a TV- and MP3-centric Christmas, and this was a category that really did perform well. And the promotional environment was not too bad.