On retrospection on Thursday, Wall Street concluded that, while a stubborn streak didn’t make the monetary policy mavens any kind of virtuous, a steady hand on the rate front probably represented the best course of action in this environment. It rallied the market up, sending the Dow up 200 points in its biggest expansion in three months.

On Friday, the same market saw data that affirmed - beyond the shadow of a suggestion of a doubt - that the Fed remains on hold for some indefinite but nevertheless protracted period of time. And that Wall Street couldn’t make heads nor tails of.

The Dow industrial average finished the session in the black, but just barely. While it recorded its third consecutive session of gains, it barely added to the week’s total, tacking on just 17 points on the day to bring in the average up 311 points on the week to a reading of 10,023.

Really sets up some drama for next week, when investors get their first glance at some retailers’ third-quarter results, along with the attendant guidance for the holiday shopping season in the fourth quarter. Especially given another economic report on Friday that said consumer borrowing declined for the eighth consecutive month.

Investors will get a glance at the third quarter performances from J.C. Penney (JCP), Macy’s (M) and - perhaps most pivotally - the results out of Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). Since Wal-Mart has stopped providing regular guidance, it’s performance could be considered the most unpredictable of the group. And Wal-Mart, arguably, represents something of a contrary indicator for the retailing sector. As the self-appointed low-price leader in key categories, its successes come at the expense of rivals. So what’s good for Wal-Mart itself can be interpreted as being detrimental to some other merchants.

The data cupboard is going to be a little barren most of next week. Two readings on budgets - the federal deficit, which has ballooned in the recession, and the trade gap, which has dwindled under those same circumstances - are out, but would only move the market if the dollar had some kind of response to the readings. Friday brings a look at consumer confidence, which figures to reinforce the dismal labor readings Wall Street saw Friday.

The casual-dining concern reported a 17% improvement in its net, and the 24 cents a share it recorded for the third quarter matched forecasts. But whatever accommodating in the numbers the company realized probably owed to one simple result of the economic condition: customers tipped less. As a result, analysts said, Cali Pizza was able to record higher tip tax credits.

Pity the waitresses. Just don’t pity the stock, which is down 7% in Friday’s trading.

Cali Pizza also recorded lower pre-opening expenses, because it’s trimmed its store-opening schedule, another result of the weakness in the economy.

Despite living up to third-quarter forecasts, the company indicated that its fourth quarter returns won’t be as strong as analysts had been anticipating, as both sales and profits are expected to miss targets. Sales are expected to fall 6% in the period. The company has introduced new menu items and expanded its wine selection, but the initiatives won’t turn around the current-quarter performance.

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (RRGB) has turned 13% weaker in Friday’s trading after the casual dining chain posted third-quarter results that fell well short of sales goals, and said that it expected to serve fewer customers for all of 2009 than had been forecast.

The burger purveyor posted 37 cents a share in profits for the quarter, in line with estimates, but recorded $187 million in revenue, short of the $198 million that analysts had been anticipating.

Of course, if it’s possible for those analysts to have expected a company to fall short of expectations, Red Robin would have been considered a good candidate. Unlike rivals like Applebee’s, part of the DineEquity (DIN) empire, or Chili’s, owned by Brinker International (EAT), Red Robin didn’t get aggressively promotional in the quarter. Both Applebee’s and Chili’s went in for two-for-$20 promotions to spur traffic.

It’s tough to argue which course - go promotional or not - proved the right one in this environment. For one thing, the last entrant in the ‘’something-for-$20” competitive probably would have to add more features to distinguish itself - four courses/two patrons/twenty bucks or three courses for nineteen-ninety-nine? - which puts that much more pressure on margins. Plus, the danger is in re-directing customers’ expectations once the spending environment improves. How does a restaurant successfully migrate customers back to paying full price if they’ve been conditioned to expect those discounts?

The market seemed to have come down on the side of Red Robin. While the investing environment has been pretty toxic for all the casual-dining operations the last several months, Red Robin - absent today’s selloff - has held up best of all: since the start of the third quarter, Red Robin has lost 6% of its market cap, compared with declines of 20% and 29% for Brinker and DineEquity, respectively.

But as it also represented Citi’s inability to find a strategic buyer for the unit suggested just how little appetite there is in the market for the businesses Citi itself regarded as ”non-core” to its operations. In short, the public option proved to be essentially the only option Citi had.

It’s perhaps a little surprising, inasmuch as Primerica earned some $244 million on about $1.1 billion in revenue in the first six months of this year. Margins would seem to be high enough to compel some interest, but it proved not to be the case.

Then there’s also the sort of clumsy corporate structure. Even after the IPO, Citi is going to posses the overwhelmingly majority - as much as 90%, according to analysts - of the economic interest in the existing insurance policies. The public Primerica will be primarily a future-sales revenue stream, keeping as little as 10% of the economic interest in the policies it’s already booked. The structure reduces the balance sheet of the new company, and makes it easier to slip-stream into the IPO pipeline.

The IPO size could be as little as $100 million - give or take, depending on the profile of the IPO market in the first quarter next year - meaning that the deal represents, at best, a modest gain for Citi itself.

GE has faded a little in October. After tripling off the March lows at just over $5, GE has slipped about 4% the last several weeks.

Oppenheimer noted the relative underperformance - down about 14% since the middle of October, versus 2% for the average blue chip - in upgrading the stock to outperform. The firm reset its price target for shares to $18 from $17.

While the GECC finance unit remains something of a burden, the need for internal capital would be minimal. The infrastructure business is under-valued. There is, of course, the moving part: the broadcasting and content business.

The unemployment rate rose more than anybody expected - even though everybody expected it to rise to high levels - and it’s hurt the recovery in the equities market.

Job losses had been expected to fall by the slowest pace of the year. Didn’t turn out that way. A reading of down 190,000 still looked pretty benign, just not as benign as had been expected.

The unemployment rate ran up to 10.2%, the highest in 26 years.

Good news on the labor market - even on a relative basis, given the widespread expectation that unemployment would hit double digit levels before the employment condition improved - had been expected to reinforce the Federal Reserve’s determination to keep rates at historic lows.

Now, worse news on the labor market is expected to reinforce the Fed’s determination to keep rates at a historic low.

The difference is the bias is to the downside in the latter scenario.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) is expected to lose about 60 points on the open, based on indications from the futures market, which suggests that the market would surrender about one-quarter of the gains recorded Thursday, when a more-accommodative approach to the Fed’s thinking sent the industrial average more than 200 points higher.

The Dow will fall back below 10,000 points on the open. Obviously, where it closes is a subject of pure conjecture.

The dollar has gained ground on the euro in the wake of the jobs report. Treasuries have rallied.

One day after the Bronx Bombers demonstrated their dominance over the artistically superior but fundamentally wanting Philadelphia Phillies, Wall Street took off in a way it hasn’t in nearly four months. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) crossed 10,000 once again for the first time since Oct. 22, and climbed within a percentage point of the high for the year of 10,092 set on Oct. 19. The industrial average moved up 204 points, the first time it’s recorded a 200-point day since July 15.

In some ways, the session turned out to be something akin to a tape-delayed broadcast of the final game of the Series contest. Brain-locked traders who sold the market off Wednesday in the closing minutes of the trading session, having adopted an antagonistic interpretation of the latest policy decision by the Federal Reserve, apparently decided to take a more-constructive view of the central bank’s latest.

The revisionism came after what’s usually a second-tier economic reading - a look at the weekly unemployment claims - caused a little enthusiasm about the labor market to creep into investors’ view of the economic recovery.

The tepid turn by jobless benefits, which fell more than expected for the latest week, coupled with a reading on quarterly productivity, which proved surprisingly strong, seemed to convince skeptical investors that Friday’s release of monthly payrolls data will show the smallest decline in jobs of any month this year.

The prospect loomed that accommodative data would only reinforce the Fed’s view that the economy’s recovery is too fragile to risk any suggestion that rates are, in fact, headed higher sometime in the next several months. That is that, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, the prospect that the economy is rebounding would only harden the central bank’s contention that the progress can’t be tripped.

So investors who saw the Fed’s hard-headedness as destructive on Wednesday saw that stubbornness as a virtue on Thursday.

All 30 stocks that make up the Dow industrials posted gains on the session, with the biggest rise coming out of the financial issues, as American Express (AXP) climbed 5%, JPMorgan (JPM) advanced 4%, and Bank of America (BAC) increased 3%.

At least holders aren’t selling at the bottom. The $4 billion deal values the stock at $22 a share, a 31% premium to Wednesday’s closing price. But the real premium is closer to 50%. That’s the value relative to where IMS traded before the Wall Street Journal reported last month that the company was deep in negotiations for a takeover.

But they are selling out of a company that traded at about $34 a share at its high two years ago, and one that was trying to execute on its own turnaround after warning about a performance shortfall in July. IMS’s earnings are expected to decline 9% this year, and another 2.5% next year.

Presumably, those turnaround opportunities - presumably - are  what made IMS so attractive to private equity firm TPG and the Canada Pension Plan, the buyers. It’s the biggest LBO of the year.

But the question becomes how it is TPG manages to monetize its investment once it’s executed on the turnaround. There’s not necessarily a tactical buyer for the asset among the drug companies that the medical-data provider services. If any one drug company pursued the company, presumably rival drug makers would jump off the platform. Again, though, not likely something that’s going to be a concern for shareholders.

The gaming concern reported that revenue and cash-flow came in above expectations for the Vegas properties. Casino revenues there proved relatively solid: table revenues up 7%, slot revenues down 6%, compared with the second quarter’s 11% decline. Occupancy levels turned out to be flat through rates declined 23%, as the Vegas market continued to contend with relatively weak business travel.

A couple issues evidenced themselves in the quarter, however. For one, MGM said that it amended its credit facility in order to allow the company to raise up to $1 billion in unsecured debt, with certain terms attached to the agreement. According to analysts, rumors have circulated that the company is planning a convertible debt offering - MGM has been close to default over the course of the last year - something that the amendment of its credit facility have fanned.

JPMorgan said in a research note, however, that it placed the chances of a convertible deal at zero.

Meanwhile, MGM, which took a write-down on CityCenter, its $8.5 billion casino project slated to open next month. The prospect of injecting another 10% of inventory into the channel in Vegas could make it difficult for the gaming concern to continue its recovery attempt, even though management has talked about using the CityCenter opening to leverage its market share higher.

Sara Lee struck a deal in September to sell its personal-care products business to Unilever (UN). The $1.88 billion sales price came to be regarded as a pretty appealing pricetag, from Sara Lee’s perspective.

But there hasn’t been much movement on the sale of its householder products division, the other key asset it’s tabbed for sale.

Still, Sara Lee continued to insist that it has been on the prowl for assets that it could integrate with its current product portfolio, which includes, in addition to its eponymous baked-good business, Jimmy Dean sausage and Hillshire Farms meats.

Fundamentally, the company has performed rather well. It used some cagey futures trading to bring its commodity costs down substantially, so its bottom line, ex items, came in healthily above estimates at 19 cents, beating by three cents. Sales reached $2.6 billion.

Sara Lee said it expected to record full-year profits of 90 cents to 96 cents, ahead of its prior forecasts and beating estimates of 89 cents a share. The stock has risen about 4% Thursday to get back in range of the $12 a share price that represented a high for the year reached Wednesday.

The variations proved glaring in the apparel sector, where relatively easy comparisons with a year ago, and some unseasonably cold weather in parts of the country, were expected to lift totals across the board. But it didn’t happen. Aeropostale (ARO), for instance, had such a mediocre year-ago total to beat, expectations called for a 14% improvement. It posted a thuddingly weak 3% improvement. Shares responded with a 14% pullback, falling 28% below the September high.

On the other hand, Gap (GPS) came through with a stronger-than-expected performance, growing sales 4% in the month, healthier than the sub-2% advance that analysts had been expecting. The retailing also raised its estimate for the quarterly profit to a range of 42 to 44 cents from 38 cents. The stock improved 4% to closeon its highs of $23 a share.

Then there were the retailers that executed on what’s effectively a push. Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), one of 2008’s better performers, at least on a relative basis, had been expected to show a sales decline of about 15% for the month. Its total: just as expected. The stock has failed at rallies at the October highs of about $36 a share, and might be topping out.

Overall, it’s early to jump to conclusions about the quality of holiday sales based on the autumn performances. Overall, inventory control and expense reductions are expected to boost bottom lines, but weaker traffic and smaller tickets are expected to keep the top line in check. Both trends seemed in evidence in the October totals. But the telling indicator is expected to be the level of promotional activity in the holiday season, something that won’t evidence itself until retailers get to the panicky stages of the selling season.

Traders greeted the public debut of Hyatt Hotels (H), which garnered the distinction of the single-letter trading symbol, with a warm embrace: the stock jumped as much as 12% in its first day of trading. After pricing at the high end of the range of estimates, a valuation that some would consider rich. At 19 times trailing earnings, it’s trading at a riper multiple than Marriott International (MAR) - at about 17 times - and Starwood Hotels and Resorts (HOT), at 13 times.  

Richer still, because all the nearly $1 billion raised in the debut offering of 38 million shares goes right into the pocket of the notoriously combative Pritzker family, which controls the hotel operation.

And the Pritzker grip won’t be loosened much with the public issuance. It’s strictly an economic event - one that benefits the family, chiefly - without giving up control of the company: the family still owns the Class B shares that come with super-voting rights. Pritzker family stake in the company could dwindle as low as 15% without it relinquishing control of the company.

Fundamentally - the valuation excepted - there’s a compelling story to be told at Hyatt. Strong balance sheet, and the ability to generate cash flow would represent a couple of the primary characteristics of the business. The Pritzker family control, however, would represent the only reason to pause.

The New York Yankees triumphed in the Series last evening, as everybody with a pulse well knows by now. So Wall Street does not have to re-visit the scenario it encountered in 1930, the previous time the Phillies triumphed in consecutive years. And, of course, we all know what happened to the market in 1930. So we’ve avoided that beat-down, haven’t we?

‘Course, the Yankees last scored consecutive championships in the year 2000. (For the record, it was the third of that string.) And in October of the year 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) stood at 10,700 points.

Roughly nine hundred points ahead of where Wall Street is trading right now.

So, as a market indicator, that Yankees’ victory … that’s some kind of world-beater, eh? The bulls are partying in Gotham today, huh?

It seems to be working, at least directionally. As a fusilade, perhaps it leaves a little to be desired. The futures on the Dow are pointed about 50 points higher. Given the seeming indifference of the market these days, 50 points can swell into - say - 60 points in less than four hours. Or 50 can get wiped out in a few moments.

Wednesday, the market turned a 130-point advance into a 30-point improvement on the close in about as much time as it takes to lose a turn at three-card monte.

The Federal Reserve’s determination to keep monetary policy unchanged until the economy sees some improvement in labor markets has underscored the importance of tomorrow’s payrolls data. The Fed once again kept rates unchanged at historic low levels, and gave no signals about its plans to absorb any of the excess liquidity sloshing around the economy.

Meanwhile, the European central bank held rates unchanged, while the Bank of England boosted monetary expansion by 25 billion pounds.

Economic data released Thursday showed productivity swelled by nearly 10% in the third quarter. Typical of a post-recession, early-recovery economy. Nonfarm payrolls declined a little more than expected.

The dollar has weakened, giving equities a little clearance, as the euro rises on the rates choices. Treasuries have steadied. Gold, after a big week, has risen modestly.

Meanwhile, the Yankees reign as the current champions of Major League Baseball. And all is right for equity investors.

Or is it?

It took Wall Street less than 30 minutes to turn from fervid to fearful about the Federal Reserve’s determination to leave interest rates unchanged, as the central bank maintained the stance that the economic recovery has been too fragile to risk even signalling an ultimate change in policy, and that inflation pressures haven’t mounted despite blooming deficits and plenty of government stimulus.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) held on to a 130-point improvement for a full 75 minutes after the central bank handed down its most-recent ruling on monetary policy. Unfortunately for the bulls, the trading session for equities lasted 30 minutes longer than that. In that time the Dow managed to shed more than 100 points of its rally, finishing the session with a soporific 30-point gain to show for the exertions. Having traded over 9900 at the session’s highs, the industrial average closed the day at 9802.

What’s difficult to say, at first blush, is whether this represented anything more than just another buy-the-rumor / sell-the-news kind of reactions with which the market often greets the latest salvo on monetary policy. To suggest that the expectation the Fed would leave rates near historic lows approaching zero represented a consensus would misstate the reality, which was that nobody at all expected a different outcome. Perhaps that explained why the market - at least initially - had a relatively sanguine reaction to the widely expected ruling.

But maybe there’s some thinking emerging on the margins that would suggest that the Fed could benefit from being a little less dogmatic. A little more yielding. If central bankers suggested there might be room, sometime down the road, to start the process of nudging rates up, perhaps investors could convince themselves Fed governors were discounting an economic recovery. That maybe they could execute on the task of sopping up some of the excess liquidity in the economy without crushing the credit markets.

Everybody knows those steps are going to be taken at some point down the road. Perhaps the uncertainty is doing for Wall Street’s psyche what uncertainty typically does to Wall Street’s fragile psyche.

If nothing else, were it to signal that it has a plan - other than wait-and-see - for taking the training wheels off the economic bicycle, the Fed might help the dollar appreciate. Treasury yields could reverse. The gatekeepers that have lately been thwarting the equity bulls might evidence some change.

For now, all the Federal Reserve has done is take December off the table. The commentary and the central bank’s body language all said, no, we’re not going to risk a rate hike next month - the emphasis on ”next month” - that would hurt the economy. Certainly not before we start to get a few more looks at how the data in the fourth quarter has shaped up. And there’s certainly no impetus on the inflation front that would change our approach or our thinking.

For now, the Fed is on hold. Which, on balance, probably is a good thing. But in declining to suggest that its mind is open to change down the road, the rally in equities might be on hold, as well.

MolsonCoors (TAP) reported a stronger-than-expected bottom line, but said that volume declined 3% as consumers evidenced some reluctance to make beer purchases in the current environment.

The company reported sales fell 7% to $853 million, though it still beat forecasts of about $837 million in sales. Volume of popular brands such as Coors Light showed a year-over-year decline in volume.

The report echoed the results posted by other brewers, including MillerCoors, the joint-venture selling beer in the U.S., and Carlsberg, the European brewer.

Adjusted earnings of $1.14 beat estimates of 98 cents in the quarter, as the company cut costs and hikes prices on some profits. Sales of some of its less-expensive product lines, such as Keystone, showed a little improvement, showing the change in the pattern of consumer tastes.

Merck now commands some $40 billion in annual sales of drug products, second only to Pfizer (PFE). Merck had been the largest-selling drug maker until Pfizer introduced the impotence treatment Viagra and took over the top spot. A wave of consolidation in the pharmaceuticals industry eventually pushed Merck down into eighth spot in the pecking order before it combined with Schering.

The merger of the drug giants should meaningfully address the ”patent cliff” that Merck had been facing, according to a JPMorgan noted quoted by Dow Jones Newswires. The firm put a $40 price on the stock, saying that the earnings growth prospects aren’t reflected in the stock.

Merck is expected to go on a cost-cutting campaign, including paring 16,000 jobs, that are expected to save the company $3.5 billion by 2011.

All lessons True Religion Apparel (TRLG) has learned in painful fashion in Wednesday’s trading, sinking more than 18%, and pulling that much further from the 52-week high it recorded a little more than a week ago at nearly $29 a share. The stock has lost 25% in that time.

True Religion reported its first quarterly earnings miss in a year. Though the miss amounted to just a penny a share - at 58 cents versus estimates of 59 - it spells a miss for the fiscal year. The company saw its costs rise in the period, as it opened and operated 30 new shops in the period.

Meanwhile, the gross profit at the company increased to 65% in the period from 58% in the year-ago frame. Management said the sales mix shifted increasingly toward high-end products. Meanwhile, the company added that customers demanded a less-embellished denim look. But it’s still selling those customers products that cost upwards of $300 for a pair of jeans.

Shares have increased 17% since the numbers proved a little stronger than Wall Street had been anticipating. Consolidated cash flow increased by more than analysts had expected - about $31 million versus projections of about $29 million - amid signs that trends in bookings, attrition and cancellations have stabilized.

RevPAR, a key measure of sales, fell much less than expected, and the company projected that consolidated same-store RevPAR would decline 13% to 18%, while operating costs continued to decline.

Gaylord’s hotel properties have seen some benefit from trends in group bookings. Meeting planners have been more conservative in their booking orders than has been the case in the past, so some group-booking attendees have found themselves without the discounted group rate, and had to resort to higher a la carte prices for rooms.

Comcast has been talking with General Electric (GE) about taking a stake - prospectively a majority stake - in its content-producing entertainment and television network operations, though GE also has pursued other strategies for the disposition of the unit. Regardless, Comcast, reporting its third quarter, kept notably mum on what’s perhaps the most-compelling issue the cable operator has been grappling with.

Outside the non-existent update on the NBC negotiations, Comcast delivered pretty much what had been expected of the company, though it did manage to beat its bottom-line expectations with 28 cents a share, which proved 3 cents better than estimates. Not much focus on the bottom line of these kinds of media companies, though.

The good news: the ability of Comcast to generate cash flow. Free cash-flow jumped nearly 20% to $1.11 billion, while operating cash-flow rose 3% to $3.33 billion.

The less-good: video subscribers continued to decline in the face of the weakened housing market and continued competitive pressure. Those subs declined by 132,000. Revenue came up short of the targeted 3% growth, though it did see some benefits of its aggressive promotion after some disappointing high-speed Internet subscriber growth in the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, customers continue to pay higher tickets as they add services, and some of those services come at a higher cost.

Stocks have rallied as the dollar is weakening in anticipation of another accommodating decision by the Federal Reserve to leave rates unchanged at historic lows, out of fear of disrupting a domestic economy that’s just only begun to show some signs of life.

Equities have responded constructively to the certainty attached to the meeting. With the U.S. currency trading sharply lower amid a bounce in European and Asian equities, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI), which recorded its second loss in three trading sessions Tuesday with a 17-point setback that dropped the average to 9772, is poised to open some 75 points to the upside, according to indications from the futures market.

Global capital markets, including currencies and government Treasuries, have assumed the role of gatekeeper for the U.S. equities market, as investors wait to see just how durable and strong the economic recovery is likely to prove to be, and when U.S. stimulus policies are going to be curtailed. 

Unlike the September meeting, when investors hung on the attendant drama of what the central bank would do with its mortgage policy, there’s no sidelights or subplots to distract traders. Once the Fed decided two months earlier that it would stretch its policy of buying mortgages from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in order to keep the rate on a 30-year mortgage holding at just over 5%, the central bank seemed to have answered the question to most investors’ certainty.

Meanwhile, economic data released ahead of the trading session from Automatic Data Processing showed that the private sector of the U.S. economy surrendered 203,000 jobs in October, fractionally above the reading that economists had been anticipating. While the reading has proved only occasionally informative of what the government data that follows it is likely to show, the private-sector payrolls report does garner its share of attention.