It's Tuesday, November 13th.

Welcome to Market Foolery.

I'm Chris Hill and joining me in studio today from Motley Fool's Special Ops, Mike Olson,

and from Motleyville Inside Value, Joe Maker,

good to see you guys.

Yo, good times. We've got we've got Home Depot, we've got a big story

in oil, we've got a lot going on at Microsoft, but let's start with Home Depot. Third

quarter earnings came in higher than expected.

The company also raised guidance.

Atlanta's own Home Depot, I turned to Atlanta's own Joe Meager.

What's going on here?

It's killer quarter.

I mean, we've talked about this on the show before, but Home Depot has spent the past

five, six years getting back to basics in terms of improving their in-store merchandising,

connecting with customers, simplifying the overall business, and it's treated them very well.

Gross margins continue to expand, and even if the housing recovery wasn't starting to unfold,

they would still be doing better right now.

And you're combining, you know, the ongoing improvements and logistics, merchandising that

they've done with a housing recovery and the numbers look great and I think they're

going to keep getting better.

To what extent of any did Hurricane Sandy factor into this quarter for Home Depot?

Not much.

...