Blog Posts by Chris Nichols

Wall Street has been admiring the turnaround at Gap (GPS) for some time, repeatedly showering the clothing retailer with praise over its operations and prospects. On Wednesday, Citi kept the upbeat commentary going, lifting its rating and price target on the stock.

FactSet data show that Gap already had been the recipient of at least 30 price target increases this year. Several came last week, after the San Francisco-based apparel seller said first-quarter sales rose 7% from the same quarter a year ago to $3.73 billion.

While a handful of cuts have been issued along the way, by and large, optimism abounds. In the case of Citi, the firm gave Gap a buy rating, up from neutral previously, and boosted its target by $8 to $48 a share, making it one of the more elevated projections on the record. On average, analysts' target price on the stock is $43.10.

The highest is $56 at Jefferies. That's not only 30% ahead of the consensus price, it's also better by almost $3 than the all-time closing

Cancer test developer Myriad Genetics (MYGN) saw its shares climb 4% Tuesday, a move that followed word from actress Angelina Jolie that she had a double mastectomy after learning she was at high risk for breast cancer.

Jolie wrote in a New York Times column published late Monday that she underwent voluntary surgery to remove her breasts because a genetic mutation she carries means she has an up to 87% chance of developing the disease in her lifetime. The 37-year-old actress, known for movies such as "Gia" and "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," led her announcement by noting that her mother died of breast cancer at age 56.

Salt Lake City-based Myriad has a test called the BRACAnalysis that's designed to determine a woman's risk of getting hereditary breast or ovarian cancer by looking for defects in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. These mutations, the company says, are the cause of most hereditary breast cancer cases. Jolie wrote in her guest piece that she has the BRCA1 mutation.

In recent trading,

Private equity firm Norwest Equity Partners is selling its stake in rifle and shotgun maker Savage Sports to Alliant Techsystems (ATK), roughly 16 months after joining with the company's management to take control of the company.

Under the deal, Alliant will pay $315 million in cash to acquire Caliber Co., the parent company of Savage, whose brands are Savage Arms, Stevens and Savage Range Systems. With the purchase, Alliant is adding long guns to its wares. The Arlington, Va., company operates in aerospace and defense, but it also has a division that produces ammunition, such as Federal Premium, and accessories like Weaver scopes.

Alliant believes the Savage purchase will add to its earnings for fiscal year 2014 that's currently underway. The acquisition is expected to close in the fiscal first quarter, which ends June 30. Savage, based in Westfield, Mass., began business in 1894. Minneapolis-based Norwest, which is part of Wells Fargo (WFC), has had Savage as a portfolio company

(Editor's note: Since this article was published, tornado activity in the U.S. has increased. Recent storms in the middle part of the nation have killed eight people and destroyed multiple homes, with Granbury, Texas, and Shawnee, Okla., among the hardest-hit areas. Monday's forecast includes the possibility of more severe weather in a number of states, including Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.)

Were you watching The Weather Channel this week, you stood a good chance of catching meteorologists Jim Cantore and Mike Bettes as they raced to track down potentially tornado-spawning systems in Texas and Oklahoma. The latter noted on his Twitter account Friday that May 10 marked the 17^th anniversary of the opening of the movie Twister.

The network's Tornado Hunt has been at full speed, with the duo joining storm chasers — sometimes employing tank-like protected vehicles such as the Dominator 3 — in a bid to intercept and document a tornado up close. The timing isn't accidental. May, on average,

Trucking company Arkansas Best (ABFS) was having the second-strongest day in its trading history after its largest unit — the ABF Freight System Division — reached a tentative labor deal with the Teamsters, boosting the stock nearly 40%. According to a company filing with the SEC, details on the pact, which involves ABF's five-year contract with the Teamsters National Freight Industry Negotiating Committee,"will be forthcoming." But traders were happy enough with the progress to bid up the shares.

In afternoon trading Monday, the stock was up $4.09, or 38.7%, to $14.64. The only time it had a bigger move was in January 1999, when it jumped 40.4%.

Meanwhile, volume was 10 times that of an ordinary session, crossing 3 million shares. That made for its sixth-busiest trading day ever as of 2:00 p.m. ET.

Being undersized helps here. With a market cap of $375 million, the Fort Smith, Ark., freight hauler is a small-cap stock; little issues, broadly speaking, are more likely to see

Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK-A, BRK-B) annual meeting is this weekend, and along with it comes a few guarantees: Company chief Warren Buffett will sing a few songs, play some paper-tossing games and get the followers of his investing philosophy generally feeling pretty good about life.

Less certain, but a decent bet, has been the fact that the gathering, the "Woodstock of Capitalism," usually coincides with a slight bump higher for the Omaha-based conglomerate's Class A and Class B stock. Going back a decade, the shares have tended to rise at this time of year. In the majority of cases, the two classes have traded in near-lockstep around the gathering, whether they rose or fell.

[RELATED: Buffett's Annual Meeting: It's a Party Not a Symposium]

Buffett champions a very long holding period (forever) as being that which he finds most appealing, but here we're going to do something very un-Oracle-of-Omaha-like and take a look at a much shorter time frame. Specifically, these are those days

If you'd put the sell in May and go away rhyme into practice, you would have exited the stock market this year at a time when the S&P 500 had risen 9.2%. Not a bad gain since the start of 2013.

However, should you prefer a more fine-tuned approach to the wholesale departure (if anyone in reality does that), you may choose to study the biggest individual winners and losers for their potential to reverse. Of course, in isolation, a stock's being down or up a lot is only one thing -- it's not much more thorough than the idea of simply shutting out the lights when the fifth month of the year arrives.

Nobody knows where we're going, only from where we've come, so shorting the strong and buying the weak doesn't guarantee you anything. But if you're inclined to start here, the bountiful and the woeful are as follows:

For this year, the stocks that have risen the most so far on the S&P are a little more diverse than the market's weak names. The top advancers have a bit of a consumer-services