STOCK MARKET

Jack In The Box: Wedbush did channel checks for the restaurant firm and they showed comparable sales running up near the 1.5% growth analysts are expecting. Wedbush also sees EPS upside for Jack In The Box because of its buyback and refranchising efforts. The company will report earnings on November 21st.

Heritage Insurance: Hurricane Matthew has remained off the coast of Florida so Heritage says the losses could be substantially lower than $500 million which is what was estimated a few hours prior. Shares are up 8% on this news.

Ruby Tuesday: had disappointing Q1 results. Same-store sales were down 2.7% Restaurant level margin fell 200 basis points to 13.9%. CEO Lane Cardwell made the following statement. "While the casual dining environment remains highly competitive and challenging as evidenced by our negative quarterly same-restaurant sales, our trend improved sequentially during the first quarter as we made investments in highlighting value aimed at building guest counts."

Gap: comparable sales fell 3% in September. Old Navy Global comparable sales were up 4%. Banana Republic Global comparable sales were down 9%. Gap Global comparable sales were down 10%. A fire at Gap’s distribution center caused comparable sales to fall 3%. Amazingly the stock is up 15% on this terrible report.

ECONOMIC NEWS

The jobs report was close to expectations coming in at 156,000 while economists were expecting 172,000. While I had expected the report to be close to expectations, my leanings were towards a beat, not a miss. This report was the worst possible outcome for the market in the short term because it was good enough for a rate hike in December, but it was still pretty weak on an absolute basis. The unemployment rate went up to 5%. The economy needs to create more jobs if it wants to keep that rate stable. In the end, this report won’t matter too much because there are still 2 more reports before the Fed meeting in December. 

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