Wal-Mart (WMT) Offering Possible 5.78% Return Over the Next 28 Calendar Days

Wal-Mart's most recent trend suggests a bullish bias. One trading opportunity on Wal-Mart is a Bull Put Spread using a strike $105.00 short put and a strike $97.50 long put offers a potential 5.78% return on risk over the next 28 calendar days. Maximum profit would be generated if the Bull Put Spread were to expire worthless, which would occur if the stock were above $105.00 by expiration. The full premium credit of $0.41 would be kept by the premium seller. The risk of $7.09 would be incurred if the stock dropped below the $97.50 long put strike price.

The 5-day moving average is moving up which suggests that the short-term momentum for Wal-Mart is bullish and the probability of a rise in share price is higher if the stock starts trending.

The 20-day moving average is moving up which suggests that the medium-term momentum for Wal-Mart is bullish.

The RSI indicator is above 80 which suggests that the stock is in overbought territory.

To learn how to execute such a strategy while accounting for risk and reward in the context of smart portfolio management, and see how to trade live with a successful professional trader, view more here

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LATEST NEWS for Wal-Mart

Lobbying on trade issues could set new record as companies sound off on tariffs, USMCA
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 17:41:00 +0000
As the Trump administration puts tariffs on a range of imported goods and pushes a replacement deal for Nafta, lobbying on trade-related issues could set a new record this year.

Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Quibi has already sold $100 million in ads
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 17:27:08 +0000
Quibi doesn’t launch until next year, and already Jeffrey Katzenberg’s mobile platform for “quick bites” of high-end content has sold two-thirds of its ad inventory.

The Target Stock Dip Was Barely a Blip
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 16:42:36 +0000
For all the headlines it caused, the two-day outage at Target (NYSE:TGT) checkouts barely registered with investors.Source: Mike Mozart via Flickr (Modified)All told, TGT stock lost about 1.5% in the past two days, after thousands of people abandoned their shopping carts and just walked out of stores over the weekend.The cash register outage came just a month after stellar earnings sent the stock shooting upward, from barely $70 per share on May 16 to nearly $90 per share a month later. The company in May said same-store sales grew 4.8% on 4.3% comparable traffic growth for the three months ending in April.InvestorPlace – Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading TipsSince then, Target has gone from strength to strength. It raised the dividend slightly, re-launched its in-house media company as Roundel, and announced same-day delivery through Shipt, a grocery delivery service acquired in 2017. Macro vs. Micro for TargetUnlike the massive 2013 data breach that eventually cost CEO Gregg Steinhafel his job in 2016, the two-hour outage on June 14 was seen as a problem caused by regular maintenance. A second, smaller problem processing credit cards on Father's Day was blamed on vendor NCR (NYSE:NCR). * 7 Value Stocks to Buy for the Second Half Rather than attack Target as negligent, most analysts chose to focus on how any company could be hit by such problems, given how dependent they are on giant, interconnected computing systems. There was a sigh of relief that no Target customer data was lost.Target's strategy under current CEO Brian Cornell has been to match its larger rivals in technology but differentiate itself with smaller stores inside urban centers, something Walmart (NYSE:WMT) abandoned earlier in the decade.While the fallout from the tech outage is likely to be brief, Target shares will be hit by general market turbulence. Consider that the Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) business conditions index is forecasting a recession ahead.A spike in jobless claims and a bad employment report for May are far more likely to impact Target shares or rivals like Walmart and Kroger (NYSE:KR) than the weekend's problems. Wait for ItIn general, conditions at stores like Target, once called "discount" stores, have been improving. Sales for May are up 3.2% year-over-year. While shopping malls continue to dwindle, stand-alone discounters like Target continue to rack up gains.Historians will note that Target itself emerged from the now-defunct Dayton-Hudson department store chain. The remaining stores rebranded as Marshall Field's and became part of what's now Macy's (NYSE:M) in 2005.Target, meanwhile, has been called Walmart's primary competitor. Even though the Arkansas-based chain is more than seven times its size, Target is more profitable. It brought $3 billion out of $75 billion in sales last year to the net income line. Compare that to $6 billion on $514 billion for Walmart. Despite this, and a dividend yielding 3.1% after its latest raise, Target currently sells for just 15 times trailing earnings. That's less than half Walmart's figure. Both are worth about 60 cents for each dollar of sales. The Bottom Line on TGT StockThe macro news is bound to overwhelm the micro news in the short term. Target's glitch is being treated as just that and, sadly, isn't a buying opportunity.If the economy doesn't collapse, Target under CEO Brian Cornell is in good shape, and a bargain for investors seeking income. If there is a recession, Target is well-positioned to get through it, but you might want to wait to see how deep the current fear goes before jumping in.Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of a new environmental story, Bridget O'Flynn and the Bear , available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned shares in AMZN. More From InvestorPlace * 4 Top American Penny Pot Stocks (Buy Before June 21) * 7 Value Stocks to Buy for the Second Half * 7 Hot Stocks to Buy for a Seemingly Sleepy Summer * 6 Chip Stocks Staring At Big Headwinds in 2019 Compare Brokers The post The Target Stock Dip Was Barely a Blip appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Trump Launches 2020 Campaign with ‘Keep America Great’ Slogan
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 15:15:43 +0000
Yesterday, President Donald Trump officially launched his 2020 reelection campaign in Florida. We're now more than halfway into his presidency, so the question now is whether President Trump has delivered on his 2016 promises.

4 Burning Questions for the Owners of Alibaba Stock
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 14:47:57 +0000
In May, Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) reported what appeared to be blowout earnings. The report topped expectations by a mile, but it did nothing for Alibaba stock. BABA stock price barely advanced following the earnings release, and it is still down 9% over the last three months.Source: Shutterstock What's going on? Surely, some of the struggles of Alibaba stock are related to the trade war. The longer it drags on, the more the Chinese economy will continue to slump. But Alibaba faces some unique issues of its own, namely that people are increasingly questioning the company's accounting. BABA is now trying to sell more stock to the public, while its short interest has ballooned to 9% of its available shares. That's a massive number for a company of its size. * 7 Value Stocks to Buy for the Second Half The shorts have been encouraged by the internet posts of a person who claims to be a financial professional These posts, made under the name Deep Throat IPO, contain allegations about Alibaba's accounting, leading many investors to conclude that BABA can't be trusted.InvestorPlace – Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips Is Alibaba Actually Earning Much Money?For last quarter, Alibaba reported a huge jump in its net income. In fact, on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis, Alibaba crushed analysts' average expectation. It reported non-GAAP earnings per share for the quarter of $1.28 against the consensus outlook of just 95 cents. Meanwhile, its GAAP EPS of $1.47 absolutely annihilated analyst estimates of just 51 cents per share.What explains the huge disparity? Most of Alibaba's reported profits for the quarter came from marking up the value of its investments rather than from its operating businesses. For the quarter, its reported net income soared 252% year-over-year to $3.5 billion. However, its actual profits from its operating business went down 5% to just $1.3 billion, though it would have posted a modest gain if it hadn't had to pay a lawsuit settlement.Still, its worth asking what's going on. Alibaba reports phenomenal revenue growth rates, yet its core retail profits are essentially flat. And its much-touted cloud and digital media divisions continue to lose money. Take out the increased profits from its investments – which doesn't mean much unless BABA can turn that paper into actual cash in the future – and BABA stock is absurdly expensive compared to its actual cash earnings. Is Alibaba Really Bigger Than Wal-Mart And Amazon?There's long been a great deal of dispute over whether Alibaba and other Chinese retailers inflate their GMVs (Gross Merchandise Volume). The SEC probed Alibaba's sales reporting a few years ago, and investors have made allegations about other Chinese firms like PinDuoDuo (NASDAQ:PDD) inflating their revenue.In the case of Alibaba, the numbers get more and more questionable as time goes on. Alibaba claims its GMV has soared more than tenfold from 2012 to today, with that figure jumping from $80 billion then to more than $800 billion now. For comparison sake, that's more than Walmart (NYSE:WMT) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) handle annually combined! You might say that Alibaba's business could be that big because China is so huge. Remember, though, that Walmart is a leading retailer in 25 countries and Amazon has a huge overseas businesses as well. It strains credibility to believe that Alibaba is larger than Walmart and Amazon put together.There's also the matter of how much each company generates per employee. That is a common check for fraud, and Alibaba comes out looking rather peculiar. Deep Throat IPO puts it well:The other ratio I find fascinating is GMV per employee. Walmart's GMV per employee is $284,000. Amazon's is $428,000. Alibaba's is $8,366,000 per employee. They are truly masters at doing more with less.Is it realistic for Alibaba's employees to be 20 times more efficient than Amazon's? If you own BABA stock, you better hope so. Is Ant Financial Worth Anything Close To Investors' Expectations?Supposedly, Alibaba's Ant Financial, a digital payments facilitator, is worth $150 billion, which would make up around a third of the overall $400 billion market cap of Alibaba stock. In fact, Ant Financial was valued at $150 billion when it raised money last year. However, there is reason to be skeptical about that valuation. Specifically, it scrapped plans for an IPO last year, and it was supposed to launch an IPO this year, but the offering appears to be delayed again.Meanwhile, Ant Financial, which is supposed to be such a dominant global payments player, doesn't appear to be doing so well. Last year, Alibaba, which has a profit-sharing agreement with Ant Financial, did not receive any distributions from Ant because Ant didn't make any profits. This past quarter, however, Alibaba earned $77 million from Ant Financial. $77 million seems like a pittance, given Ant Financial's supposed $150 billion valuation. Perfectly normal. What Happens If the Chinese Financial System Freezes Up?For all of Alibaba's purported profits, the company keeps needing more money. There's probably good reason for that, since most of its "profits" don;t come in the form of cash while it is investing money in a nearly endless list of start-ups both in China and overseas. As mentioned above, Ant Financial did a big fundraising push last year, and now Alibaba is trying to unload a cool $20 billion of its stock in a secondary offering in Hong Kong.All this brings up the trade war and the weakening yuan. The yuan is near seven per dollar, its lowest level in years, and pressure appears to be growing for a major devaluation of the currency. What happens to Alibaba's ability to raise more money to keep its investing carousel spinning if China's capital markets freeze up? Also, the valuations of all these nascent businesses Alibaba has invested in will implode if the IPO window shuts down for these sorts of firms. The Verdict on BABA StockIt's been interesting watching Alibaba and JD.com (NASDAQ:JD) over the past year or two. As the Chinese economy has slowed, many of China's retailers have seen their growth rates sharply drop. JD, for example, has gone from 50% annual growth to just 20% recently. Alibaba's growth rate, however, appears totally unaffected by the deepening Chinese malaise. It keeps pumping out 50% annual revenue growth, rain or shine. Does Alibaba have a special sauce that keeps it immune to economic weakness?So far, BABA stock has been a winner. But how long can it keep up? Alibaba already claims to be larger than Amazon and Walmart put together. If the numbers are real, surely BABA will run out of people to sell to fairly soon; there are, after all, limits to a company's growth once it dominates a market. And if the numbers aren't real…At the time of this writing, Ian Bezek owned JD.com stock. You can reach him on Twitter at @irbezek. More From InvestorPlace * 4 Top American Penny Pot Stocks (Buy Before June 21) * 7 Value Stocks to Buy for the Second Half * 7 Hot Stocks to Buy for a Seemingly Sleepy Summer * 6 Chip Stocks Staring At Big Headwinds in 2019 Compare Brokers The post 4 Burning Questions for the Owners of Alibaba Stock appeared first on InvestorPlace.

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