Trade-Ideas: Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) Is Today's Unusual Social Activity Stock
Trade-Ideas LLC identified
(
) as an unusual social activity candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Wal-Mart Stores as such a stock due to the following factors:
- WMT has more that 20x the normal benchmarked social activity for this time of the day compared to its average of 25.65 mentions/day.
- WMT has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $765.2 million.
Identifying stocks with 'Unusual Social Activity' tends to be a valuable process for traders looking to capitalize on the 'talk of the town' stocks that are basking in far more attention from the StockTwits financial community than normal. Good press? Bad press? It ultimately doesn't matter if it's good or bad if you know how to trade around the sentiment. Certain hedge funds use such data for their proprietary algorithms and it is not uncommon to see shared social sentiment play itself out in a stock's price trend.
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More details on WMT:
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. operates retail stores in various formats worldwide. It operates through three segments: Walmart U.S., Walmart International, and Sam's Club. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 3.1%. WMT has a PE ratio of 14. Currently there are 3 analysts that rate Wal-Mart Stores a buy, 2 analysts rate it a sell, and 13 rate it a hold.
The average volume for Wal-Mart Stores has been 8.5 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Wal-Mart Stores has a market cap of $204.7 billion and is part of the services sector and retail industry. The stock has a beta of 0.19 and a short float of 2.1% with 2.86 days to cover. Shares are up 3% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Wednesday.
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Analysis:
rates Wal-Mart Stores as a
. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its attractive valuation levels, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and notable return on equity. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had somewhat weak growth in earnings per share.
Highlights from the ratings report include:
- The debt-to-equity ratio is somewhat low, currently at 0.62, and is less than that of the industry average, implying that there has been a relatively successful effort in the management of debt levels. Even though the company has a strong debt-to-equity ratio, the quick ratio of 0.22 is very weak and demonstrates a lack of ability to pay short-term obligations.
- Regardless of the drop in revenue, the company managed to outperform against the industry average of 5.8%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly dropped by 1.4%. The declining revenue appears to have seeped down to the company's bottom line, decreasing earnings per share.
- The change in net income from the same quarter one year ago has exceeded that of the S&P 500 and the Food & Staples Retailing industry average. The net income has decreased by 7.9% when compared to the same quarter one year ago, dropping from $4,966.00 million to $4,574.00 million.
- The company's current return on equity has slightly decreased from the same quarter one year prior. This implies a minor weakness in the organization. Compared to other companies in the Food & Staples Retailing industry and the overall market, WAL-MART STORES INC's return on equity exceeds that of both the industry average and the S&P 500.
- You can view the full Wal-Mart Stores Ratings Report.
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