Big 5 Sporting Goods Corporation (BGFV) announced a big third-quarter report earlier this week that has led to increased earnings estimates in the past several days.

< ?DART(15);?> The sporting goods retailer also set down a fourth-quarter earnings guidance above the Zacks Consensus Estimate, which has also taken a turn higher lately.

Today, shares of Big 5 are up approximately 10%, making it a top-performing Zacks #1 Rank stock. Volume at around 165,000 shares is above the daily average at 153,000.

As of its quarterly report on Nov 3, Big 5 operated 382 stores in 11 states, providing a product mix that includes athletic shoes, apparel and accessories, outdoor and athletic equipment for team sports, fitness, camping, hunting, fishing, tennis, golf, snowboarding and in-line skating.

Out of 230 stocks on today's Zacks #1 Rank List, Big 5 is one of only 2 companies

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Liberty Media [LMDIA: 17.34, +0.15 (+0.87%)] has been in the news a lot lately, due to CEO John Malone’s recent bailout of Sirius XM Radio [SIRI: 0.2473, +0.0123 (+5.23%)]. This article is not about that deal, however. This article is an attempt to explain the structure of Liberty Media, which is sure to confuse most amateur investors, as well as some professional ones. This is because Liberty uses “tracking stocks,” which have not been popular since the dot-com days of the 90’s.

According to investopedia.com, a tracking stock is a “common stock issued by a parent company that tracks the performance of a particular division without having claims on the assets of the division or the parent company.”

When a parent company issues a tracking stock, all revenue and expenses of the applicable division are separated from the parent company’s financial statements

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Zumiez, Inc.’s (ZUMZ) second quarter EPS beat the street by $0.02, but the management lowered its full-year EPS guidance forecast from $0.90-$0.93 to $0.80-$0.86. We are again lowering our estimates for the second half of the year. Our 2008 EPS estimate goes from $0.86 to $0.79 and our 2009 EPS estimate goes from $1 to $0.90.

We continue to expect a weak consumer into 2009 because macro headwinds (housing, debt and food/energy prices) will persist for some time. The stock is now trading at 17.7x our 2008 EPS estimate and 15.6x our 2009 EPS estimate. We think this valuation is reasonable and we prefer to remain neutral on the stock. Our six-month target price is $15, or about 16x to 17x our 2009 EPS estimate.

The investment case for Zumiez is supported by its competitive strengths and long-term growth strategy. The company targets those customers who are interested in action

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