Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions). The first question is from Neely Tamminga of Piper Jaffray.
Neely Tamminga - Piper Jaffray
Good morning. I just have a couple questions for you guys, if I may. First, just on the guidance in Q4. It seems to me that in some ways you're looking for a comp acceleration or an improvement relative to what you just reported yet the loss is ranging down to a loss of $0.20. Can you help reconcile that a little bit? I understand Richard what you're saying about it's going to be excessively promotional this season and we completely agree, but I'm just wondering how should we be looking then at merchandise margins or the mark down rates or gross margins in view of that?
Richard Crystal
Well, you have to look at the movement of City Cash so the trend is probably similar that we are projecting at this point because City Cash has an impact on our trend and as we stated earlier, to November to-date has significantly improved in trend with the movement of City Cash.
With reference to the earnings in the markdowns we have included and anticipated number one, that it's going to be a very promotional season, so we have tried to put everything into that to be able to respond to that so that we remain competitive, that we try and maintain our market share as much as we can, and also that we insure on February 1 that we have totally clean inventories as we anticipate the environment could remain difficult as we move into the Spring season. So we are allowing for all of that in our projections.
Neely Tamminga - Piper Jaffray
Okay. That's helpful. And I guess staying on the topic here of Christmas and Spring and maybe this is (inaudible) Leslie, but it seems to me gift cards are expected widely to be down year-over-year, just given what's going on in the economy either in amount or units. And I'm just wondering how that then changes or does it change the week after Christmas cadence? Is the week after Christmas now much more about super duper clearance activity and less about new product for gift card redemption? Has that changed at all in terms of how you guys are flowing in product and maybe to that could Leslie just speak about, is there any help for fashion in Spring? Could you help us out, please?
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