Bed Bath & Beyond Hits New 52-Week High

The stock market is down a bit this morning but we’re still holding on to most of the gains we made from Friday’s big push. The S&P 500 is currently down about 5.5 points.

The market is being helped by Citigroup’s ($C) earnings report which was quite good. The bank earned 84 cents per share which was two cents better than estimates.

Citi’s losses from bad loans fell 41 percent during the quarter to $4.5 billion as defaults fell from its credit card loans for Citi-branded cards. That allowed Citi to add $1.4 billion to its earnings from credit reserves it set aside for deeper losses.

The bank’s international consumer business increased 10 percent due to growth in Asia and Latin America. Its North American consumer business fell 9 percent from a year ago due mainly to lower average balances on its credit cards. Revenue in the card business also fell due to regulations that limit the ways banks can increase interest rates and fees.

Citi said its stock and bond trading business was hurt by uncertainty in financial markets due to the debt crisis in Europe and a downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating in August.

It could have been a lot worse. A lot. The shares are currently up about $1.

I was very impressed by the recent fall in the $VIX and I suspect that to continue. Earlier this year, the $VIX had dropped below 15 and I think that will happen again over the next few months.

On our Buy List, Bed Bath & Beyond ($BBBY) just broke out to another new 52-week high. The stock has been as high as $61.69 today.

The other good news is that the UAW rank-and-file seem to favor the recent deal with Ford Motor ($F).

UAW members at Ford went from voting 53 percent against the proposed contract on the morning of Oct. 14 to 62 percent in favor by yesterday at 8:30 p.m. New York time. The union said 14,845 members at Ford had cast ballots in favor of the labor deal while 9,076 voted against. Ford’s 40,600 U.S. hourly workers will conclude balloting tomorrow.

If the deal wasn’t approved, there was a chance that Ford could have faced its first nationwide strike in 35 years. One analyst said the strike would have cost Ford $71 million per day.

Posted by on October 17th, 2011 at 10:07 am


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