After the first half hour of trading this morning, Green Mountain is up nearly 20% at $64.20. Volume is already equal to the daily average of about 7.2 million shares traded. The coffee company posted solid earnings after markets closed last night.

Gap Stores is up more than 9% at $21.25. Volume is already about 80% of the daily average of about 5.3 million shares traded. The clothing retailer reported weak January sales, but lifted its EPS outlook for the fourth quarter above analysts’ estimate.

Response Genetics is up more than 32% at $1.56. Volume is more than double the daily average of about 17,000 shares traded. The drug maker announced the private placement of about 5.3 million shares at $1.50/share, about 28% higher than last night’s closing price.

Education Management is down nearly -20% at $20.55. Volume is already about a third of the daily average of about 230,000 shares traded. The for-profit educator reported weak earnings and lowered its EPS outlook for 2012.

SandRidge is down more than -13% at $6.80. Volume is already nearly double the daily average of about 11.7 million shares traded. The oil & gas company has agreed to acquire an offshore driller for about $1.3 billion.

The DJIA is up 0.01% at about 12,718, the Nasdaq Composite is up 0.31% at about 2,857, and the S&P 500 is up 0.15% at about 1,326.

Paul Ausick

Who is at fault as these issues and, most importantly, the issue of Avon’s financial performance, which has undermined the firm’s stock price and reputation? The board of directors.

The Avon board is an odd mix of people, some of whom are hardly qualified to sit in their positions. The board’s lead director, Fred Hassan, who should have been at the forefront of solving Avon’s management problems, has been much too slow in carrying out his duties. He has been a director as long as Jung has been CEO. He has been in a position to watch all of the firm’s troubles unfold and did nothing until he and others forced Jung out.

Maria Lagomasino, a private banker, has been on Avon’s board since 2000. It is hard to see how someone with her background has any reason to be involved with governance at a large public company. Don Cornwell has been on the board since 2002. He is a former radio executive. Paul Pressler, who was dismissed as the CEO of Gap (NYSE: GPS), is also on the board. His turn as the head of a public retail firm ended badly.

There are few precedents of public boards that have been dysfunctional as long as Avon’s. The best example may be Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), where the board stumbled and bumbled for years. The tech company hired former eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman. Many of the HP board members have left recently. The pressure for them to do so has existed for some time. It is remarkable that the board took so long to do what it should have long ago — bring in appropriately experienced directors.

The changes in Avon management have not been accompanied by changes on the board. Until they are, the reasons to trust that the company’s many problems can be fixed are nonexistent.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Teen stores Buckle and Zumiez battered expectations, while Gap and Wet Seal both missed expectations badly.

Data from CNBC.

Read the ten best online stores this holiday
Read the ten worst online stores this holiday 

To put those customer service rankings in context, we looked at how the parent companies that own the websites have performed recently.  We found that a strong customer service rating often coincides with a company that has widely regarded brands.

It begs the question: Does Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) have such a high customer service ranking because so many consumers love the Apple brands? Or, is Apple’s customer service for online shoppers really superior to that of other e-commerce businesses? Apple is tied for second place in the index. Amazon.com is in first place. It also has a sterling reputation with consumers, as do some of its major products like the Kindle.

At the bottom of the ForeSee index are Gap (NYSE: GPS), Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Overstock (NASDAQ: OSTK). Gap recently said it would close 21% of its U.S. flagship stores. Sony has had trouble gaining sales for its PCs, games, smartphone and TV products. Overstock, an also-ran online department store, was founded in the days of the dial-up internet. It is hard to see how any of these could be at the top of the list. Or, perhaps if they were at the top of the list, they would not be in such deep trouble now.

ForeSee’s E-retail Satisfaction Index included the top 40 retailers by sales. The company surveyed 8,500 customers between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Despite its shortcomings, 24/7 Wall St. used the data from ForeSee as a foundation, because it is a reasonable measurement of the experience that consumers have with specific e-commerce sites, whether those sites are part of highly successful companies or ones on the verge of failure.

There is also some evidence that a few troubled retailers have actually performed well online. Whether that success is enough to save the companies themselves is impossible to tell. One such example is Avon (NYSE: AVP), with online service that is tied for second among all e-commerce sites in the ForeSee index. But Avon recently posted a disastrous quarter, and its CEO of 12 years was dismissed. Similarly, JCPenney’s (NYSE: JCP) online operations’ customer satisfaction is equal to Apple’s, which is also tied for second place in the ForeSee rankings. However, JCPenney has lost sales to big-box retailers such as Walmart (NYSE: WMT) for years. It is worth noting that JCPenney just hired the head of retail stores at Apple to turn the bricks-and-mortar retailer around. Apple is one of the few companies that was successful online long before it began to build physical stores.

These are the the companies with the best and worst online customer satisfaction. To draw our conclusions about why they are on the list and what the relationship is between the companies and their e-commerce operations, we examined three factors: the ForeSee satisfaction data, the annual sales of each of the companies, and the amount of traffic each site had in November — the most recent month measured by audience research firm Compete.com. Foresee describes its rating as “Average customer satisfaction with the top 40 U.S. e-retail websites increased by one point this year to tie 2009’s all time high score of 79 on the study’s 100-point scale. Satisfaction scores for individual e retailers span a 16-point  range, from a high of 88 (Amazon) to a low of 72 (Overstock).”

New York Times (NYSE: NYT) sells its regional media group for $143 million. (Reuters)

The U.S. Treasury declines to label China a currency manipulator. (Reuters)

Research firm ForeSee says that Gap (NYSE: GPS) and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) have poor online service. (Reuters)

Data shows that consumer confidence is up while home prices fall. (Reuters)

General Electric (NYSE: GE) buys MetLife’s (NYSE: MET) online bank. (Reuters)

A plan to revive Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD) falters as holiday sales drop and the firm says it will close up to 120 stores. (WSJ)

Two KKR (NYSE: KKR) executives resign from the board of Eastman Kodak (NYSE: EK). (WSJ)

Samsung and Sharp agree to fines for price fixing — charges were brought by New York state. (WSJ)

A drop in housing prices could hurt the U.S. jobs market. (WSJ)

Two-thirds of companies that went public in the U.S. this year trade below their IPO prices. (WSJ)

A U.S. judge sets aside a previous decision that would prevent BP (NYSE: BP) from drilling in Alaska. (WSJ)

China cuts its export expectations for rare earths for next year. (WSJ)

The SEC may get a federal appeals court to consider its blocked settlement with Citigroup (NYSE: C) over fraud charges. (WSJ)

Banks put 412 billion euros with the European Central Bank over Christmas. (FT)

The Carlyle Group returns $15 billion to investors so far this year. (FT)

Oil prices rise as Iran threatens to curtail shipments. (FT)

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) shareholders may be hurt by a series of patent wars. (Bloomberg)

A pending deal to merge NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX) and Deutsche Boerse gets an extension from regulators. (Bloomberg)

Internet IPOs could hit a level in 2012 not seen since 1999. (Bloomberg)

Douglas A. McIntyre

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) ranked first. That makes sense. Amazon is the world’s largest e-commerce company. Without excellent customer service, it would not hold that position for long. Amazon’s revenue has grown at a rate near 50% for the past two quarters.

The bottom of the list is littered with some companies that have deeply offended customers in some way. Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is there. It raised rates and confused its subscribers with a jumble of explanations. The Gap (NYSE: GPS) is near the bottom as well. Gap’s image probably was not helped when it announced that it would shutter 21% of its flagship stores in the U.S. The news almost certainly undermined employee morale as well. This should have spilled over into customer service problems.

The bottom of the list also contained some firms that have to improve customer relations if they are to recover from terrible sales problems that have persisted for years. All three office suppliers fall toward the troubled part of the list: Office Depot (NYSE: ODP), Staples (NASDAQ: SPLS) and Office Max (NYSE: OMX). And of course, as should be expected — Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD) is there.

Customers probably see company e-commerce efforts through the same lens as efforts and satisfaction in bricks-and-mortar operations. That shows up in the ForeSee report.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Sears is in such great enough trouble that shuttering 3% of locations barely dents the problem. The Kmart and Sears store networks must have a larger portion of their outlets that underperform enough not to be profitable, or are only marginally so.

Sears also must deal with the fact that its online business is not strong enough to allow it to compete with e-commerce sites that draw much more traffic, particularly Target (NYSE: TGT), Walmart (NYSE: WMT) and, of course, Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN).

Sears needs to show Wall St. that it takes its severe trouble more seriously. Its stock is down 20% on the poor sales news to a 52-week low of $36.31. The best recent example of a larger retailers that dealt with same-store sales problems was the Gap (NYSE: GPS), which said it will close 21% of its U.S. Gap flagship outlets. Sears would have to cut 800 locations to make a comparable downsizing. Sears and Gap do not have identical problems. Sears is a broad-product-line store chain. Gap is a specialty retail one. But extremely poor same-store sales are a mark of a retailer that has maintained a financially unsustainable network.

Sears’ problems are not new. If they were, management could make the argument that it might turn the retailer around with only modest store cuts. But Sears is now struggling to stay a viable company. A 3% cut in locations is not nearly enough.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Gap (NYSE: GPS) and Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD) shares sold down sharply in the fourth quarter. Shares of Walmart (NYSE: WMT), JCPenney (NYSE: JCP) and Macy’s (NYSE: M), though, remained steady or gained. This despite the fact that these three are threaten nearly as much as other bricks-and-mortar retailers are as e-commerce becomes a larger part of the retail market.

Concerns about the three weak retailer stocks are very specific.

Best Buy has been unable to thwart Amazon.com’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) rapid expansion into consumer electronics and digital content. These businesses are now nearly as strong as the e-book and print book businesses are for the largest e-commerce company in the world. Like Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), Best Buy failed to create a web presence or online price model that would allow it to defend itself against Amazon.

Sears Holding’s problems are largely different from those of Best Buy. Kmart and Sears stores have not changed much in the past five years. The parent has elected not to commit the capital to upgrade its locations. Sears might have done better if its stores were freshened like those owned by Walmart, Macy’s and Target (NYSE: TGT). Sears management has witnessed how being cheap can get expensive when customer retention is at stake.

The reasons for the failure at Gap fall into another category. The retailer had the instinct to remain on the leading edge of mid-priced fashion. It lost that edge two or three years ago for reasons that are unclear. Gap has been overwhelmed since then by the success of smaller retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF).

The retail industry, like most others, will lose some of its largest companies over the next few years. Best Buy, Sears and Gap are likely to be among them.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Of course, many big public corporations also did very poorly. Several nearly destroyed their business and dragged down shareholder value with it. 24/7 Wall St. combed through the S&P 500 to find the best and worst managed companies in America for 2011.

Read: The Best Run Companies In America
Read: The Worst Run Companies In America 

To make a list of semifinalists, 24/7 Wall St. considered stock price, changes in earnings per share, major shifts in market share and changes in management, among other data. Once the initial screen was complete, we reviewed product launch success, financial results, success of new management and the performance of each company within its industry. The editors then sifted through the finalist to identify those that rewarded both customers and shareholders and those that caused these two groups the most harm.

Neither the best-run companies list nor the worst-run companies list includes a large number of corporations from any single industry. This indicates our methodology identifies well- and worst-managed companies regardless of the industry. Based on our criteria, the management of Starbucks did as good a job as the management of Oracle — two of the best-run companies. Similarly, Eastman Kodak management did as poorly as the management of American Airline parent AMR — two of the worst-run companies.

This is 24/7 Wall St.’s Best and Worst Run Companies of 2011.

Pacific Sunwear of California (NASDAQ: PSUN) said it would close 200 stores. The company faces competition for the sale of glasses and other personal wear items. Not all retailers will benefit from improvements in sales this holiday season. The news follows a recent announcement that the Gap (NYSE: GPS) will close 200 of its own outlets. For all the retailers who boast that the 2011 holiday season will be strong, several have found otherwise.

AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) could not be in a business more different from Pacific Sunwear. But the large pharmaceutical company finds itself in a period of falling sales. It will cut 1,150 jobs in the U.S. Many will be sales staff, which is a sure sign that revenue growth has become troubled. Either the economy has hurt the company or its products have failed in the market. It hardly matters to those who will lose jobs.

On the same day as the other two job actions, McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MHP) announced it would cut 550 jobs in its education publishing division. Sales of textbooks must have dropped.

The three actions, all in one day, are not directly related to one another. It is open to speculation if they would have happened if the economy was in a substantial recovery. The job cuts do, however, remind those who believe that the employment market has recovered that there are still pockets of trouble large enough to cost thousands of jobs.

Douglas A. McIntyre