Get Ready to Build on Home Depot

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I'm driving along the main artery near the city I call home with my dearest friend, who reminds me that we need new furnace filters. "That's nice," I respond in an atypically apathetic mood, wondering why she brought up that topic.

In five minutes I found out when she exclaimed, "There it is, the Home Depot!" Before I could catch my breath I'm being told to take the next left turn and navigate into an "end spot" in the parking lot. Within 10 minutes we had found the exact filters we needed, checked ourselves out through the self-service line and were back in the car heading home.

That's what shareholders call "The Home Depot Touch."

Home Depot (HD) will step into the earnings limelight before the market opens Tuesday and "touch" us all with its most recent earnings results.

This powerhouse is the only home improvement store chain that's a member of the prestigious Dow Jones Industrial Average composed of 30 of the biggest and most successful publicly traded companies in America. Every index fund that represents the DJIA has to own shares of HD. With the recovery in the housing market millions of Americans will be motivated to shop there.

Why, you so intuitively ask? Because if you have a house you want to sell you're going to want to improve it, remodel it or renovate it in a number of ways to make it more attractive. A fresh coat of paint or some new window fixtures plus an endearing door mat and a few ceiling fans and the buyers will find your house hard to resist. "Cha-ching" goes the HD cash registers and shareholders smile.

Jim Cramer and Stephanie Link actively manage a real money portfolio for his charitable trust -- enjoy advance notice of every trade, full access to the portfolio, and deep coverage of the latest economic events and market movements.

Home Depot shares have moved higher as the good news about home prices and a housing recovery oozes from the talking heads on all the news channels. When you look at how the trailing 12-month revenue per share has been doing, you'll not be surprised by the one-year chart below.