Kroger surges, Pier 1 sinks and Blackberry may be back from the dead

Time for your daily dose of Trending Tickers, the stocks that you're tracking as measured by Yahoo Finance ticker searches. Making the list today are:

Kroger (KR) - The super market giant is up more than five percent on an earnings beat. We've said it a hundred times - grocery is the most unforgiving business on the planet. Kroger shares have doubled in the last two years and the company has a net margin of 1.5%. Staying alive gets you into the grocery Hall of Fame. Thanks to its purchase of Harris Teeter and successful roll-out of in-house organics, Krogers was able to boost its earnings forecast to a range of $3.19 to $3.27 versus prior outlook of $3.14 to $3.25. At Facebook that'll get you fired but for Kroger it's good for a 5% gain.

Pier 1 Imports (PIR) - The one-stop destination store for all your wicker and tiki torch needs is seeing shares go up in smoke after missing estimates. Pier 1 took down it's earnings outlook range by a couple cents, citing a competitive promotional environment. Implicit in such a warning is the notion that Pier One hadn't before realized that every major American retailer extant, including the aforementioned Kroger's, is operating in a world where customers like to pay less for goods and services. On the upside, Pier One says ecommerce sales are going to double this year and next. Those sales get counted in the same store sales data, making these results somewhat weaker than they appear.

Blackberry (BBRY) - The smartphone maker is up more than 12 percent today despite reporting Q1 hardware sales that were, in a word, atrocious. That's actually not a major concern since CEO Jon Chen has been moving the company out of phones and into services, mobile payments and just about anything that doesn't involve selling Z30 phones. Blackberry is getting more than 50% of its revenues from services and has stopped bleeding cash. That's good enough to stomp the bears, if not bring back the glory days of Crackberry's past.

Those are your trending tickers today -- tell us what stocks you're watching on Twitter using the hashtag #TrendingTickers

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