Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT)

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  • commenter
    Ben
    Holdsworth
    Feb 20 06:05 AM
    5 Reasons Why China Retail, China 3C Group Are on a Roll [view article]
    Great summary. A couple of anecdotal comments from the Google message board add to your premise, made by zhisheng. This first regards the Chinese retail business cycle, the second the winter strom impact inrelation to CHCG:

    1) I am Chinese and here are my two cents: there are two peaks of
    weddings in China's rural or urban areas: The first lunar month
    (Mainly from the Spring Festival to the 15th of the the first lunar
    month), and October when most people have at least one week long
    holidays (National day on Oct 1). Getting married is becoming more and more expensive now in China, I don't have the number but besides
    furniture following things must be purchased for their new home: a
    nice TV, digital camera or camcorder or both (to record the phynomenen events of the new couple like wedding, birth of new baby, etc.), a PC (remember China became number one in internet users, most average home has one PC, though the family does not use them very often - Chinese are very fast to pick up new technologies :) Now you know what this mean to the Q1 and Q4 earnings of electronics stores like China 3C.

    2) The winter storm would have some impact on the sales but I would not worry too much in a long run. I talked to my friends in China on this issue, they are all optimistic with 2008. Plus the regions that were
    hard hit are mainly in Hunan and Guizhou, China 3C's sales region are
    mainly in Jiangsu and Zhejiang (big cities as shanghai, nanjing and
    hangzhou are in this region), the impact of the snow on this area is
    not that bad, people lived normal life during the storm - they
    experienced a few cold days and the streets were slippery due to ice,
    other than that I've nothing very severe, like the cut of power lines
    and close of the stores, etc.     Reply
  • commenter
    SA Editor
    Eli Hoffmann
    Feb 19 11:27 AM
    Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
    Indeed, CrossProfit. Great call! Reply
  • commenter
    CrossProfit
    Feb 19 09:21 AM
    My Website
    Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
    "Iron ore price soars"

    Seeking Alpha readers were aware of this trend already back in October 2007.

    See:
    www.crossprofit.com/ar...
    or
    seekingalpha.com/artic...

    "A risk to our assessment for CLF (not the price of iron) is that current Australian port infrastructure may not be capable of handling much more volume without upgrading. This could take two years, postponing further benefits from the Australian acquisitions."


    The trend was clearly pointed out again in a follow-up article in December 2007.
    See:
    www.crossprofit.com/ar...
    or
    seekingalpha.com/artic...

    "In general, prices reset in January every year for iron pellets on all long term contracts. Different formulas are used for the various contracts with a partial resetting done on a quarterly basis...

    Australia Portman acquisition benefits from hedged exchange rate and there should be a large price increase coming through in January"

    There were at least two opportunities to go long below $95 since the first article and one opportunity since the second. We reiterate the closing paragraph from the first article;

    "Should both iron ore and coking coal live up to predictions, we could see CLF trading at $160 in 2008."

    CrossProfit (consensus)     Reply
  • commenter
    Phil DeMuth
    Feb 18 04:57 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Hi Roger --

    Yes, you can calculate the monthly returns based on Yahoo! historical quotes or you can enter a transaction portfolio into Morningstar and they will keep track of it for you. You would still need to use Yahoo! to get the historical prices when you set up the portfolio, but from then on Morningstar would have it on autopilot for you. Good luck with it.     Reply
  • commenter
    deaverb
    Feb 18 08:45 AM
    My Website
    Wal-Mart's International Push Continues with Mexico [view article]
    Absolutely correct! Wal-Mart should let the US grow organicly (to use that fancy word), stop "fighting" folks here, and take a low profile (right now one of Target's key assets is it is "not Wal-Mart"). That would let the "good" about Wal-Mart come to the surface--great prices, great jobs in lots of areas without many, and a generally OK place to shop. Learn from McDonalds--do your growth elsewhere where people really "want" a Wal-Mart. Good article. Disclosure: Sold my stock in Wal-Mart when Lee Scott announced he was going to go "up" in price and compete with Target (people want Wal-Mart to be Wal-Mart, not a second Target). Sell Target not Wal-Mart. Reply
  • commenter
    tessant
    Feb 17 02:25 PM
    My Website
    Wal-Mart Chooses Blu-ray, a Boost To Sigma Designs [view article]
    oops...u are affilitated with barrons...my bad Reply
  • commenter
    tessant
    Feb 17 02:24 PM
    My Website
    Wal-Mart Chooses Blu-ray, a Boost To Sigma Designs [view article]
    looks like u copied the story from barrons...weak dude...

    blogs.barrons.com/tech.../
     Reply
  • commenter
    Roger Beep
    Feb 16 05:10 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Hi Phil;

    I might try it. I have a few concerns about undertaking this project. One concern I have is determine the actual monthly return on the Global Giants and Diversifiers Individual Stock portfolio. If I personally held that portfolio the brokerage firm would tell me what the monthly return was.

    Let me step you thought how I might determine the monthly return and then you may wish to comment. Since this portfolio represents several years of investing experience and a few generations of portfolio development as per the Supercharge book I am going to assume $100K in total assets -- in reality it should be more but for the sake of modeling I will stipulate $100K.

    Using Yahoo Finance I think I can determine the closing price of a stock for any particular trading day. I will assume I bought all of the holdings on 12/31/2006. I am unclear how I could from a retrospective point of view determine the monthly return on the portfolio, including the dividends.

    Additionally, I would like to automate future monthly return data so I did not have to be scheduled in front of my computer to get that month's return data. From where I stand there are some practical considerations that I would need to figure out and for that reason I may not be able to undertake this project at least right away. For example, I anticipate having to write a macro for Excel to call the data that I would need. I am not that skilled at Excel but for a guy that self-taught himself computing in the old DOS days I feel like I could probably take it on. This could be a great learning experience for me after I clear the deck on a couple of other intense projects I have currently under taken.

    Also, I appreciate your observations about the extremes, the tail values and what they portend for a porfolio's risk vs. return and the median expected return vs. 1st percentile loss.
    Reply
  • commenter
    Phil DeMuth
    Feb 16 01:42 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Hi Roger -- You'll get no argument from me here, I love charts. Perhaps Geoff will put this idea in the hopper for QPP version 5.0. In the mean time, if you have QPP, you can enter the tickers and date ranges and do the analysis yourself.

    Imagine that the 25%ile rank showed a loss of 1%. Then, a year later, the portfolio is down 1%. Is that a successful prediction? Perhaps. It would take a lot of samples to confirm -- you are likely to run out of lifetime before you accumulate enough data points, and by then it will be too late anyway.

    So it's really the tails that are of interest, and why the past few months are so relevant to examine here. Since the whole thing is based on the currently unfashionable but nevertheless highly relevant normal distribution curve, all the information (Mean - 2SDs, for example) is really contained in the tail values. Unless I'm mistaken, the shape of the chart in every case would be a standard curve.

    The issue of how to graphically present the risk/return tradeoffs in the most compelling way is one I often think about. For clients, I might present it as median expected return vs. 1 percentile loss at different equity allocations. I think this is more communicative than just mean vs. standard deviation.


    Reply
  • commenter
    Roger Beep
    Feb 16 12:12 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Hi Phi;

    I appreciate you thoughts regarding taking a rather unsophisticated view of things, the 1st percentile risk, estimated median returns and endless attention to returns. What I really liked about the flow of the Supercharge book was the emphasis on risk and with examples showing us what to avoid up front and then moving on to core holding portfolios using indexes and ending up with an all stock portfolio that was developed with QPP.

    I could live with the "unsophisticated view" that you mentioned if I or perhaps you had developed the Individual Stock Portfolio that appears in the Supercharge book for my personal use. And on a practical level I think you are correct. However, as a purchaser of the Supercharge book and QPP I would like to see more on the predictive validity of QPP using the example portfolios.

    That is the reason for advancing a standardized graphical assessment. For example, the standard deviation (S.D.) levels from page 6 of QPP can be visually represented by the frequency envelope about the median using the Excel chart. I believe this can be varied by the user to reflect various S.D. levels. As I recall an X2 (read as “times 2”) frequency envelope is a ± 0.66 S.D. This all done graphically without having to resort to complicated statistical procedures. Most end users would much prefer a picture (chart) of these matters as opposed to confirmatory statistical data or summative comments about declines and gains. The upshot is one would be able to graphically see how QPP tracks to actual returns over time. In other words we would have a graphical picture of QPP’s predictive validity given the portfolio examples in the Supercharge book.
    Reply
  • commenter
    Phil DeMuth
    Feb 15 11:12 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Mike & Geoff: Thank you for your comments.

    Roger: Thank you for your helpful suggestion. I tend to take a rather unsophisticated view of these things. I look at where the estimated median returns are, and then I look at the 1st percentile value-at-risk for an educated guess as to what I might experience in a really terrible year, short of World War III. Then, if I can't do the time, I don't do the crime, and I make adjustments. As for the upside, I figure it will take care of itself. As Peter Bernstein says, I can't control the returns, but I can control (at least to some extent) the risk. This is part of the message of the book as well. We see people devoting endless attention to returns but insufficient attention to risk.     Reply
  • commenter
    Roger Beep
    Feb 15 07:03 PM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Hi Phil;

    I thought that this was another well written article. In addition to the "inputs" or holdings portion of the portfolio I would like to see a chart of the "outputs" to include the portfolio’s projected return using QPP's forward looking analysis using perhaps the 1st, 5th 10th, 20th and 50th (Median) values from p. 6 of QPP and the actual monthly return. I invite you to examine a standardized Excel chart template for this purpose which is resourced at harderchartingtemplate.../ and listed as SCCFB_mcpm_v7_1.xls. This chart covers a ten year period for each month. See the "LineFree" chart. It appears that BlueLine and LineFree have been switched. It should read "BlueLine." This would allow for comparisons using a standardized charting metric.
    Reply
  • commenter
    Geoff
    Considine
    Feb 14 06:48 PM
    My Website
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Note also that the EXPECTED return for this portfolio was higher than the historical trailing return. Reversion to the mean was set to act in favor of this portfolio. This is an attribute that I like in a portfolio and was not true of a number of broad indexes at the time. Reply
  • commenter
    granger
    Feb 14 10:36 AM
    Global Giants and Diversifiers To Supercharge a Portfolio [view article]
    Myabe the makings of a semi-actively managed ETF. I would rather on an ETF designed like that, then a market blanket one.

    Good stuff, keep us posted. I thorughly enjoyed it.     Reply
  • commenter
    IMA FISH
    Feb 12 10:23 PM
    Wal-Mart Stores: Is this Awakening Dog a Greyhound? [view article]
    Walmart has gotten too big for their collective britches- prices are high all over, Target, Macy's, K-Mart. to name a few. The management blames it on the economy, the higher cost of fuel to deliver goods to the stores, and theft. We just fired an employee in the accounting office at the Walmart I work at who was "skimming" off the armored car truck, to the tune of $60,000!!! We catch shoplifters everyday, but it doesn't stop the guy/gal in the back from helping himself to a few CD's or DVD's or a tool or two; if a CD valued at $11.72 gets stolen once an hour from all 1500 US stores, thats an amazing $154,000,000 taken in ONE YEAR! Why have a "Theft" policy that states: Anyone under the age of 17, or over the age of 64 can take up to $25.00 worth of merchandise and Walmart won't prosecute. Because they feel its not worth all the added calls to the local police dept, that strains their resources. Well Walmart, your straining my resources! If our profits rise, give us a bonus, like you said you would. don't come up to us in a morning meeting and ask for volunteers to leave early to save the company money. And make it a fair bonus too. if management gets a $9000.00 bonus, then we should get it too. We're the ones doing the work. We're the ones that have to deal with your bonehead decisions. don't give us a paltry $40.00 "Bonus" and then take taxes out of it too. And stop the stupid cheer you make us do at the meetings, this aint the 6th grade. Freakin rah rah BS. I'll be glad when my lawsuit pays out this year. I aint spending that $1200.00 the gov't is giving us at Walmart either Reply

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