The Watch List names lost 4.37 percent this week, worse than any of the benchmarks. Again, not surprisingly given the median market cap of Watch List members, the performance was closest to the small-cap indices and it is still slightly ahead of them since inception.

It was a busy week, with earnings warnings from Borders Group (BGP), BJ’s Wholesale (BJ) and Yankee Candle (YCC), and an earnings disappointment from Journal Register (JRC). Ceradyne made its nuclear ambitions concrete, but will have a tough time fighting an Armored competitor. Hansen Natural (HANS) got kudos from Fortune.

Other news, that was fit to print but didn’t fit, includes:

Starbucks to up noncoffee merchandise for holidays - Yahoo! News

The holiday line-up will feature a glittery snow globe on a gold-colored base, at least three kinds of Christmas ornaments, a reusable Advent calendar that turns into a miniature chest of drawers at the end of the season and a dessert plate reading “Cookies for Santa.”

NTT DoCoMo going Super 3G

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced that starting today it will accept proposals from suppliers for development of equipment for Super 3G base stations and handsets.DoCoMo will select one or more suppliers for each of these categories around October and aims to complete the technology with the selected suppliers before the end of 2009.

The Super 3G standard is expected to provide superfast downlink data rates of over 100Mbps and uplink data rates of over 50Mbps, low-latency data transmission, and improved spectrum efficiency.

Accenture Acquiring Advantium and Meridian Informed Purchasing, Two Companies Specializing in Profit Recovery and Analytics

The two companies use sophisticated processes and proprietary software to analyze clients’ procurement and payables data to prevent, detect and recover the lost profits, or erroneous payments, which can result from human error, system-integration issues, contract non-compliance and fraud.

Cognizant (CTSH) forms digital media center of excellence.

Statoil’s Valkyrie well disappoints.

Travelzoo continues its growth in the UK.

Brunswick sneezed and MarineMax caught a cold.

KCS Energy acquisition by Petrohawk closed.

Pinnacle (PNCL) asked to place additional aircraft lease deposits.

In September 2005, Northwest Airlines, Inc. requested that Pinnacle Airlines, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines Corp. (collectively, “Pinnacle”), pay $21,700,000 in additional aircraft sublease security deposits by March 1, 2006. Pinnacle has disputed Northwest’s right to seek additional security deposits at this time. Northwest has extended its deadline to August 14, 2006 while the parties continue ongoing discussions regarding their future business relationship.

Gabelli to Pay $130 Mln to Settle With US on Cell Licenses.

Campbell Soup to sell UK, Irish units for $845 mln. That’s a cash infusion equal to five percent of the market cap.

Disclosure: Author is long Starbucks (SBUX) at time of publication.

Watch List member Borders Group (BGP) revised its second-quarter earnings guidance to a loss of $0.28-$0.32 from the prior expectations of $0.10-0.20. According to their press release:

The updated guidance reflects non-operating charges, including a pre-tax charge of $2.7 million associated with the retirement of Chief Executive Officer Greg Josefowicz (see related news release issued today), and a pre-tax charge of $2.3 million related to the closure of a distribution facility, which was completed earlier than initially planned. As a result, non-operating adjustments, which were originally estimated to be an after-tax charge of $0.00 to $0.02 per share are now expected to be $0.06 to $0.07 per share. In addition to these non-operating charges, the company is also experiencing second quarter sales trends that are below expectations, which also contributed to management’s decision to revise second quarter earnings per share guidance.

Due to these trends, Borders Group also updated second quarter comparable store sales estimates, which include the cycling against the Harry Potter book from last year.

They knew there was no Harry Potter book this year, so that can hardly be trotted out now as an excuse for the incremental $0.10 earnings shortfall not accounted for by one-time charges.

Shares fell as low as $15.10 in after-hours trading, marking new 3+ year lows.

The company also announced that George Jones, 55, who headed Saks’ department store group before leaving in September, will replace Greg Josefowicz, who said in January he would retire within the next two years. While it looks like Jones will have his work cut out for him, by starting at such a low point it might not take much to get the shares moving in the right direction.