Although we don’t believe in timing the market or panicking over daily movements, we do like to keep an eye on market changes — just in case they’re material to our investing thesis.
The S&P 500 Index‘s three-day decline ended Thursday, as stocks responded to signs that the Chinese economy is getting back on track. The world’s second-biggest economy boosted both imports and exports, indicating that the trend of decelerating growth in the last two quarters may soon come to an end. In the U.S., trailing four-week jobless claims fell to the lowest level since 2007, providing some optimism on the domestic front, as well. The S&P 500 added six points, or 0.4%, to end at 1,697 Thursday.
Of the 10 sectors in the market, telecom was the only one to fall today, which should help to give some idea why Windstream Corporation (NASDAQ:WIN), another telecom company, ended as one of the S&P’s worst, declining 4.2% Thursday. Simply put, Windstream struggled today because it’s very difficult to post impressive results when you’re losing customers. Windstream lost customers in each of the following three segments: voice lines, digital TV, and high-speed Internet. If you’re a smaller player, it’s tough operating in an oligopoly like the telecom sector; though Windstream tries to differentiate by focusing on rural markets, “rural growth” is a hard thing to come by.
Lastly, Computer Sciences Corporation (NYSE:CSC), an IT services company, dropped 3.8%. A few things contributed to Thursday’s decline, the first of which was simple profit taking. The company reported impressive first-quarter results late Tuesday, blowing out Wall Street’s earnings expectations. As a result, the stock soared 8.5% yesterday. Up more than 30% already this year, some short-term investors may be inclined to cut and run. But today brought more game-changing information for markets to process: Computer Sciences acquired Infochimps, a big data firm that should immediately help the company enhance its analytics ability, and launch it into the growing big-data field. Terms of the deal weren’t released; it’s clear the acquisition should add value; it’s just not clear how much that added value cost.
The article Today’s 3 Worst Stocks originally appeared on Fool.com.
Fool contributor John Divine has no position in any stocks mentioned. You can follow him on Twitter @divinebizkid and on Motley Fool CAPS @TMFDivine.The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned.
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