Ross Stores Jumps on Strong Sales

The S&P 500 broke above 1,593 this morning. We had more good news from our Buy List stocks. Thanks to its good earnings report, Bed Bath & Beyond ($BBBY) got up to $68.30 today, although it’s pulled back since then.

Ford Motor ($F) is up on news of strong sales out of China. The shares are close to making a two-month high.

Our big winner for today is Ross Stores ($ROST). The discount retailer is currently up 7% thanks to a better-than-expected sales report for March. Same-stores sales jumped 2% last month. Ross had been expecting a decrease between 1% and 2%. Ross also said that it expects to top its previous earnings forecast of $1 to $1.04 per share. For April, Ross sees same-store sales rising by 5% to 6%.

Our bum stock today is Microsoft ($MSFT) which had been doing well. The shares are currently down about 4%. The catalyst for today’s sell-off was news of lousy PC sales:

On Wednesday, the research firm IDC reported that worldwide PC shipments declined 13.9 percent during the first three months of the year compared with the same period a year earlier.

To put those numbers into perspective, that is the most severe decline in the PC market since IDC began tracking the business almost two decades ago and almost double the rate of decline that the firm was expecting for the quarter.

Gartner, another research firm, had estimates that were only slightly better, showing an 11.2 percent decline in PC shipments for the first quarter.

Microsoft is due to report earnings next week.

Posted by on April 11th, 2013 at 10:27 am


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