Wal Mart is very cheap right now.  It seems like a great deal.

Cheap compared to what?

It's 30% lower than it was at the start of the year.

 

WALMART's P/E is over 10.  Not a bargain.  It still may be a buy, but not a bargain.

To be fair I don't think its PE has been under 10 in the last 20 years though.

 

That depends. Do you think they'll rebound?

Thats my issue. They seem to be dead set in continuing to have very little staff, very few open registers, and only stock as soon as their limited staff can get to it.

There is a reason that dollar stores, target, and others have done well.

I can go into walmart every day for the next 30 days and there is a chance that i might not be able to buy the socks i wear. That says a lot.

I dont think this marketplace idea is enough to save them but i could be wrong. I expect their financials to remain fairly flat and stock price to remain flat or dip some more.

You guys convinced me it's too risky to hold right now.  I bought at $57.40 and sold at $58.50.

Bought WMT yesterday.Paid off nicely today

Bought some WMT call options after the big drop in oct and added more as it kept dropping.  Patience paid off today in a big way.  Home Depot was another good one.  Market is very leery of retail right now so these were great wins.

I bought it for a long term hold

More important, will its consumer which is its  base rebound?  Nope.

damn, they just announced they are closing 262 stores!!!

As a former walmart guy, I say look towards Amazon as our future retail overlords.  One thing Walmart hasn't done is grow with the times and the tech.

Walmart is reactive to changes in the retail world.  They are no longer innovative.  I could see this many many years ago in their development of their web sites.

My father-in-law is pro-WMT.  Says they have a plan and are working towards embracing the web with a more of a "order & pay online, pickup in 5 minutes or less" model.  He believes it's a buy-and-hold for a decade or so.

My FiL has a terrible track record picking stocks.

::shrug::

Finally catching up to in store pick up?  I believe Circuit City had that too.  Amazon is offering 1-2hr delivery and paying the drivers $20 an hour scheduled in 2hr blocks you pick to work, delivery radius from dispatch no further that 1hr travel time all controlled by an app on your phone.  Hows that for creating jobs and providing a service?

I did say that my FiL has a terrible track record of picking stocks, right?

You did.  I'm just bashing walmart today.

You know, tried to use Walmart.com a few months ago.  They had about the same prices as Amazon, so I figured sure, I'd give them a shot.  When I checked out, they then said they would mail me 2 of my items, but I had to drive to my local Walmart in a day to pick my other item.

WTF?!   If I wanted to drive to a store, I would have driven to a store.

Never used them again.

What the hell I might some for a long term hold.

Yes this is an excellent point about Wal-mart being behind the times in terms of embracing technology for its business and how the consumer uses it.  Additionally the same old input is still true today about the company in that their very business has sort of painted themselves into a corner.  They mainly cater to consumers looking for the lowest prices on just about anything Wal-mart carries, so by their very nature you're going to have people with lower incomes and means typically shopping there.  So their profit margins are already pretty thin, there's not really anyplace left for them to go.  



Now Amazon is really interesting in this mix because even they are able to sometimes undercut Wal-marts prices on things if you don't mind waiting for it.  So that's already one advantage for Amazon, but then Amazon also has so much shit you can buy.  I can't go to Wal-mart or walmart.com and buy some type of gourmet speciality butter imported from France; Amazon makes buying that stuff easy, including all sorts of imported stuff that's hard to find.  



Even though Amazon is sort of wanting to skirt payroll taxes with their Flex drivers, I'm sorry but I think that's a great business idea for them to  get their products to the consumer a lot faster.  Despite any naysayers of the Flex idea, I believe market demand for such services is going to absolutely skyrocket in the coming years.