Will the Worsening Lumber Shortage Derail Home Depot and Lowe's?

Walk into any Home Depot (NYSE: HD) or Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) stores these days and there is a good chance you will be struck by what you don't see: merchandise. Many of the shelves lack products, and what the stores do have is displayed in a way to make the racks seem more full than they really are.

Yet there's one area where the home improvement warehouses can't disguise a lack of merchandise -- their lumber departments. A recent visit to my local Home Depot found the lumber racks virtually picked clean, with just a few stray pieces of dimensional lumber scattered about.

While sheet goods were somewhat better, pricing on even the cheapest grades of plywood were exorbitant, and it was like that at several of the area DIY centers I visited. That doesn't bode well for Home Depot or Lowe's earnings in the coming quarters.

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Source Fool.com