Barrett Business Services Up 35% intra-day on Earnings Surprise

Barrett (Nasdaq: BBSI) is the staffing/PEO company that I described buying too early in the "Anatomy of a Mistake" section of the post "From Joel Greenblatt to Jim Rogers, Part III: The Importance of Macro Trends". Today it's up after announcing 2Q earnings of 29 cents per share after the close yesterday, beating the consensus estimate of 22 cents per share. The company also raised its guidance for Q3. These earnings are especially surprising given the CEO's bearish comments on the California labor market during the last conference call. On that call, he estimated that California (where the company does more than half of its business) had an unemployment rate of about 7.5%. I'm still down a lot from where I bought BBSI, but I am content to continue holding this one.