All discounters posted strong y/y comparable store sales growth in May08 supported by growth in traffic and average transaction size. Unlike discounters, department stores displayed a reverse trend as they posted negative y/y comp-store sales growth. Clothing and accessories retailers reported mixed results. read more…

Rahul Kenkre, Prashant Padelkar and Nisha Parmani contributed to this note

Verizon Wireless (VZ) has announced its plan to acquire Alltel Corp. (AT) which would make it the largest cellular carrier in the U.S. This acquisition should not only push Verizon past AT&T Inc. (T) in terms of number of subscribers, but also put additional pressure on T-Mobile USA Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. (S). read more…

Of the S&P500 stocks, Gridstone covers 370 companies. We offer full coverage overlap in the Consumer Services and Nondurables (CSND), Consumer Durables, Technology, Telecom, Energy and Utilities sectors and majority overlap in Financial Services and Industrials sectors. We are not yet covering any stocks in the Materials and Health Care sectors. This note looks at the sectoral quarterly earnings trend since Sept-06 and YoY growth in diluted EPS since Sept-07 of the S&P500 companies in the Gridstone universe. read more…