The Street Beat

Tomahawk, WI 10/13/2011 (PennyPayDay) – Specialty pet retailer PetSmart raised its third-quarter earnings guidance to 46 cents to 48 cents a share from a previous range of 41 cents to 45 cents. The company also raised full-year guidance to $2.46 to $2.52 a share from the previous range of $2.40 to $2.48 a share.

This comes after Goldman Sachs' analysts last week downgraded the stock on concerns about strained consumer spending.

Shares were plunging 19.5% to $35.46 in premarket trading Thursday as investors took profits.

The CEO of web services company AOL, Tim Armstrong has been speaking with key shareholders in the last few weeks to sell the idea of a sale to Yahoo! that could result in up to $1.5 billion of cost savings, Reuters reported.

AOL shares were rising 4.3% to $13.72. Yahoo! shares were down 0.4% to $15.70.

Senior Housing Properties Trust was tumbling 3% to $21.15 after 8 million common shares were priced at $21 a share.

Akamai Technologies shares were advancing 2.3% to $23.91 as the company was named as a potential acquisition target for Internet search giant Google. A Business Insider report shortly before the close Wednesday cited numerous unnamed sources in the advertising technology industry as saying Akamai is the name that keeps coming up while chasing a rumor that Google may be pursuing a deal.

Google is expected by analysts on Thursday to report third-quarter earnings of $8.74 a share, up from $7.64 a share a year earlier. Google shares were flat at $548.30.

Research In Motion is seeing a 'significant increase in service levels' for BlackBerry in Europe, the Middle East and Africa after outages spread across the globe this week.

Shares were falling 2.2% to $23.35.

JPMorgan's third-quarter profit declined 4% to $4.26 billion, or $1.02 a share.

Analysts were expecting earnings of 91 cents a share on revenue of $23.39 billion.

Shares were down 1.9% to $32.57.

Unionized coking coal workers in Australia have overwhelmingly rejected a labor contract proposed by mining giant BHP Billiton and are getting ready for more strikes. Shares were down 1.3% to $75.21.

Retail giant Wal-Mart will now focus its mergers and acquisition strategy on existing markets, Bloomberg reported, citing Doug McMillon, chief executive of Wal-Mart's international unit, who was speaking at an investor conference this week. Shares were down 0.8% to $54.75.

PennyPayDay Disclaimer

The following are newswire headlines about the September FOMC minutes:

Some Fed officials sought to retain option of QE3, saying it was more potent tool to spur growth

With traders expressing continued optimism about the European debt crisis, stocks have moved sharply higher in early trading on Wednesday. The major averages have all shown notable moves to the upside after ending the previous session mixed.

Medical devices maker Synergetics reported fourth-quarter profit of 8 cents a share, meeting expectations. Shares were plunging 12.3% to $5.50 in premarket trading, ahead of the company's conference call at 10:30 a.m. EDT.

Car rental company Dollar Thrifty said it hasn't received any final acquisition proposals by an Oct. 10 deadline and will continue with its stand-alone plan. Shares were tumbling 4.1% to $57.94 in premarket trading Tuesday.

Superior Energy Services, the oilfield services company, agreed to buy peer Complete Production Services in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $2.7 billion. There was no premarket activity in shares of either Complete Production or Superior.

In August the net change in total non-farm payrolls was no change at all. For the first time since February 1945 and for only the second time in the history of this data series which began in 1939, non-farm payrolls were 0k on a seasonally adjusted basis. Although the figure will probably be revised away the odds of a second consecutive 0k print for payrolls must be pretty high. So, with that in mind, I won’t guess zero, but rather -1k. Additionally I will estimate, if you can call it that, that private sector payrolls will come in at +45k. Both figures are well below the average guesses, according Bloomberg, which shows the total payrolls are expected to be +55k, with the private sector adding 90k.

Stocks were strong in Asian trade. The Hang Seng, back from one day off, was up five and two thirds percent, Australia rose three and two thirds percent and the Nikkei was up one and two thirds percent; Shanghai was again closed for a holiday. European indexes are also broadly higher this morning with the Dax one percent better and Footsie up about two percent at the moment. US stock futures are up about a quarter percent as I write.