Market Notes for Tuesday

Yesterday was an interesting day for the markets because there was an unusually large divergence between the Dow and S&P 500. This happens from time to time. The reason for yesterday’s divergence was the poor performance of Boeing. At one point, BA was off by more than 13%. By the close, it was down 5.3% for the day.

The spread yesterday between the Dow and the S&P 500 was 68 basis points. That’s a pretty big gap. Boeing is the highest-priced Dow stock and therefore it has the greatest weight. By market cap, it’s only the ninth-largest in the Dow.

The problem, of course, is that the Dow uses price-weighting instead of market cap. Also, the Dow is just 30 stocks.

Two other things to point out. Ross Stores (ROST) plans to open 100 stores this year.

Ross Stores recently opened 22 Ross Dress for Less® (“Ross”) and six dd’s DISCOUNTS® stores across 12 different states in February and March. These new locations are part of the Company’s plans to add approximately 100 new stores – 75 Ross and 25 dd’s DISCOUNTS locations – during fiscal 2019.

“These recent openings reflect our ongoing plans to continue building our presence in both existing and newer markets, including the Midwest for Ross, and expansion of dd’s DISCOUNTS into Oklahoma and Illinois,” said Jim Fassio, President and Chief Development Officer. “We now operate a total of 1,745 Ross Dress for Less and dd’s DISCOUNTS locations across 38 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam. As we look out over the long-term, we remain confident that Ross can grow to 2,400 locations and dd’s DISCOUNTS can become a chain of 600 stores given consumers’ ongoing focus on value.”

Finally, RBC Capital Markets raised its price target on Stryker (SYK) from $184 per share to $204 per share. They have an outperform rating for the stock.

Posted by on March 12th, 2019 at 8:58 am


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