Even more positive retail news. Clothing chain Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) beat earnings by 16 cents this morning, reporting a fiscal Q3 2026 profit of $2.36 per share. Quarterly sales also edged out expectations at $1.3 billion.
Rounding out the good news, Abercrombie guided investors for a fiscal 2026 earnings beat. Management says profits per share should range from $10.20 to $10.50, well ahead of the analyst forecast for $10.06.
Abercrombie stock is surging in response, up more than 30% this morning. The Voo is also gaining, now up 0.3%.
Electronics superstore Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) beat earnings by a dime this morning, reporting $1.40 per share in fiscal Q3 2026 earnings. Sales were $9.67 billion for the quarter, $100 million more than analysts had expected.
Best Buy guided higher through the end of its fiscal 2026, saying earnings will range from $6.25 to $6.35 per share, versus the consensus number of $6.26. Revenue will also be slightly better than expected, in a range from $41.7 billion to $42 billion.
Best Buy stock is up 3.5% in response. The Voo, however, is heading south and now down 0.1%.
In further bad news for the economy, as investors await official government data on employment, private payroll processor ADP continues to help out as best it can with published data on employment trends.
ADP reports today that private companies are shedding employees at the rate of about 13,500 jobs per week, implying total job losses of perhaps 54,000 in October. Official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, telling us the tally of all non-farm job gains and losses for the past two months, aren’t expected to come out till December.
On the plus side, now that the markets are open and stocks have resumed trading, the Voo is up 0.1%.
Live coverage has ended. The full story is below.
This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates.
The S&P 500 surged to close 1.6% higher on Monday, but appears to be pausing for a breather this morning, with the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) basically flat premarket.
This morning, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced September retail sales data, which showed sales began slowing even before the government shutdown through the economy for a loop. Sales increased 0.2% in September nationwide, slower than August’s 0.6% gain. Worse, essentially all the increase in September “sales” came in the form of price hikes on products. Prices rose 0.3% in the month, and if you back out that increase, shopping-sales actually declined 0.1%.
On the plus side, Commerce also released the Producer Price Index for September, showing a 0.1% rise in producers’ costs for the month — less than the 0.3% increase economists had expected. Annualized, producer prices are up 2.6%, which is also below estimates for 2.7%.
What does it mean for consumers? Well, as of September, producer costs rose less than consumer spending, so that’s probably good for retail profits… except for the fact that all this data is a month old, and things probably got worse for the economy in the midst of the nation’s longest-ever government shutdown.
Keep that in mind as we await updated data for October.
In other news, Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) shares are taking a hit this morning, down more than 4% premarket, on reports that Meta (Nasdaq: META) is planning to switch from using Nvidia “GPU” AI semiconductor chips and start buying “TPU” chips from Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG) instead.
As you’d expect, this news is helping Alphabet stock, which is up more than 3% this morning. It’s also helping Meta, which presumably will be getting better prices for its chips as Nvidia loses its near-monopoly status. Meta stock is up nearly 2% premarket.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
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