(By Rich Beiglmeier) Well, well, well, after all that complaining about a boring, weak volume, the indexes stuck out their tongues and rallied, sharply on good volume. Maybe Wall Street had enough of iStock's whining and nagging?
The acceleration, with commitment, should help stocks propel higher into the weekend. Minus some sort of crazy news from Euroland, Friday's slate of U.S. economic reports aren't of the market altering variety.
Consumer Sentiment and Leading Indicators could be momentary obstacles to momentum, but only minor speed bumps designed to slow you down versus reversing course.
We also like that the NASDAQ outpaced the Dow and S&P on the day. The NASDAQ is like Mary, where it goes, the other indexes are sure to follow. Our short-term target for the tech heavy index was 3060ish, and it closed at 3062. iStock expects for resistance to emerge from here to 2012's high of 3134.
Along with a good week for stocks, iStock's iEstimates continued to identify companies with a good chance of topping Wall Street's consensus estimate. Seven of the 10 companies highlighted exceeded expectations in the direction of our predicted surprise. That's a little lower than we like but still better than most – especially for the price!
We even managed to have a buyout make the list.
Physicians Formula Holdings Inc. (
FACE) was acquired to go along with its bullish earnings report. Let's see if we can do it again this week.
iEstimates 8-20-12
| Company | Ticker | Date | EPS | iEstimate | Surprise | % Surprise |
| Focus Media Hld | FMCN | 8/20/2012 | $0.47 | $0.48 | $0.01 | 2.13% |
| Aspen Tech Inc | AZPN | 8/21/2012 | -$0.07 | -$0.06 | $0.01 | 14.29% |
| Raven Inds Inc | RAVN | 8/21/2012 | $0.38 | $0.39 | $0.01 | 2.63% |
| Pac Sunwear Cal | PSUN | 8/22/2012 | -$0.12 | -$0.10 | $0.02 | 16.67% |
| Perceptron Inc | PRCP | 8/22/2012 | -$0.10 | -$0.08 | $0.02 | 20.00% |
| Collective Brnd | PSS | 8/22/2012 | $0.24 | $0.26 | $0.02 | 8.33% |
| Aruba Networks | ARUN | 8/23/2012 | $0.04 | $0.05 | $0.01 | 25.00% |
| Shiloh Inds Inc | SHLO | 8/23/2012 | $0.11 | $0.12 | $0.01 | 9.09% |
Last Week's iEstimates and Results:| Company | Ticker | EPS Date | EPS | iEstimate | Surprise | % Surprise | Actual |
| Array Biopharma | ARRY | 08/13/2012 | -$0.13 | -$0.12 | 0.01 | 7.69% | -0.09 |
| Cti Industries | CTIB | 08/13/2012 | $0.09 | $0.10 | 0.01 | 11.11% | -0.02 |
| Interoil Corp | IOC | 08/13/2012 | $0.06 | $0.09 | 0.03 | 50.00% | -0.16 |
| Dicks Sprtg Gds | DKS | 08/14/2012 | $0.64 | $0.67 | 0.03 | 4.69% | 0.65 |
| Physicians Form | FACE | 08/14/2012 | $0.04 | $0.05 | 0.01 | 25.00% | 0.13 |
| Citi Trends Inc | CTRN | 08/15/2012 | -$0.44 | -$0.41 | 0.03 | 6.82% | -0.54 |
| China Distance | DL | 08/15/2012 | $0.04 | $0.05 | 0.01 | 25.00% | 0.04 |
| Petsmart Inc | PETM | 08/15/2012 | $0.65 | $0.66 | 0.01 | 1.54% | 0.71 |
| Xueda Educ-Adr | XUE | 08/15/2012 | $0.15 | $0.17 | 0.02 | 13.33% | 0.2 |
| Stage Stores | SSI | 08/16/2012 | $0.34 | $0.49 | 0.15 | 44.12% | 0.37 |
| Foot Locker Inc | FL | 08/16/2012 | $0.32 | $0.35 | 0.03 | 9.38% | N/A |
Have a great weekend; we'll see you on Monday.
Happy Trading