How to Trade on Hurricane Sandy

When trading begins tomorrow there will be a rush to make money from Hurricane Sandy with the automatic notion that Home Depot (NYSE:HD) and Lowe’s (NYSE:LOW) are the stocks to own.

It would stand to reason the storm has created huge demand for the things stocked at these stores, but common sense doesn’t always work in the stock market.

After Hurricane Katrina in late 2005, investors flocked to these names. In both cases the share price was near what would be the all-time high.  There are other names I like as longer term plays on Sandy but between these two I would go with HD. Ironically after recently beating the street HD caught a downgrade while LOW, after missing the street, caught two upgrades on targets.  I think there are better long-term investments including Generac (NASDAQ:GNRC), PGT Inc. (NASDAQ:PGTI), Lumber Liquidators (NYSE:LL) and Clean Harbors (NYSE:CLH) but of the two big box home improvement stores I like HD best.

Better execution, larger stores and footprint in Sandy’s path.