Wal-Mart (WMT) Offering Possible 7.87% Return Over the Next 28 Calendar Days

Wal-Mart's most recent trend suggests a bearish bias. One trading opportunity on Wal-Mart is a Bear Call Spread using a strike $155.00 short call and a strike $165.00 long call offers a potential 7.87% return on risk over the next 28 calendar days. Maximum profit would be generated if the Bear Call Spread were to expire worthless, which would occur if the stock were below $155.00 by expiration. The full premium credit of $0.73 would be kept by the premium seller. The risk of $9.27 would be incurred if the stock rose above the $165.00 long call strike price.

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

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

The RSI indicator is at 22.08 level which suggests that the stock is neither overbought nor oversold at this time.

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

PlayStation 5 Scalpers Use Bots to Hunt Down Scarce Consoles
Thu, 17 Dec 2020 07:25:40 +0000
(Bloomberg) — Sony Corp. has created one of the hottest gadgets of the year in the PlayStation 5, but its launch has been marred by scalpers who are buying up scarce supplies and threatening the long-term health of the company’s most important product.Scalpers, who buy devices at retail and then resell at a higher price, have long been a challenge in the games business. But the problem is particularly acute this year because the coronavirus has squeezed production and pushed more console sales online — where scalpers use sophisticated bots to buy up the PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox.Furious gamers are calling out resellers for charging $1,300 or $1,400, almost triple the retail price, on sites like eBay and Twitter. “This is a launch disaster,” one Twitter post declared, vowing not to cave to usurious prices. “Scalpers can keep them.”The threat is that Sony’s struggles in the first weeks of the launch could hurt its ability to draw gamers and developers to the new platform, undermining profits for years to come. A console’s debut is supposed to set off a virtuous cycle of consumers rushing to buy the devices, while developers release games that capitalize on new graphics and processor capabilities, sending demand on both sides surging. Sony risks suffering the opposite.“The PlayStation 5 could miss a critical chance to get into a good hardware-software upward spiral,” said Kazunori Ito of Morningstar Research. “The peak of the platform will likely be low and the platform’s total revenue earned won’t be as strong as we hoped for.”The company’s share price rose 2.7% to a 19-year high on Wednesday amid undiminished and growing enthusiasm for gaming stocks that saw rival Nintendo Co. surge by 6.6%.Scalpers deploy bots that constantly monitor online stores for changes in inventory and supplies, then automatically place orders and check out in seconds when devices become available. The technique is based on familiar web-crawling or scraping technology, but is specifically tailored for e-commerce and can sometimes jump to the front of order queues.“One bot preventative action we implemented just hours before the PlayStation 5 event on Nov. 25 blocked more than 20 million bot attempts within the first 30 minutes alone,” U.S. retail giant Walmart Inc. wrote in a statement Tuesday. The company is asking others in the retail industry to join it in lobbying lawmakers to address the bot issue.Evidence of Sony’s trouble is clear in what’s known as the tie ratio, or the number of games sold for each console. A healthy ratio for a new console is around one, meaning each person who buys a machine also walks away with at least one game. The figure is important because the PlayStation 5 is sold at a loss, while games are lucrative.So far, Sony appears to be seeing sales of about one game for every three devices — compelling evidence scalpers are hoarding the consoles. First-month estimates from Japan’s Famitsu show Sony sold around 213,000 PlayStation 5 consoles in the country, while the top three titles sold less than 63,000, excluding digital downloads. Sony’s Spider-Man and Demon’s Souls were the top games, while the third was an outside software company. For comparison, Nintendo sold a half million Switch consoles in its first four weeks on the domestic market, and the top three titles accounted for roughly the same number.“Even if we consider digital download software purchases, the percentage of sold PlayStation 5s actually in use is not that high, meaning the current demand is constrained by profit-taking resellers,” said Hideki Yasuda, analyst at Ace Research Institute. The PS5 is compatible with PlayStation 4 game and comes with Astro’s Playroom pre-installed, so players may not be immediately compelled to buy new titles.Sony’s scalper headaches are aggravated by struggles in production. The company has said it aims to sell more than 7.6 million PlayStation 5s by the end of March, beating the previous-generation console’s performance.But the pandemic has created shortages throughout the industry’s supply chain, crimping the ability of companies from Sony to Apple Inc. to ramp up output. Key suppliers, including MediaTek Inc., have said chip availability will be constrained through the first half of 2021. Strong demand from electric-vehicle makers, among others, has been consuming capacity for some parts used in the PS5, according to people familiar with its supply chain.Of particular concern for Sony, production yields for the PS5’s main, custom-designed processor remain inconsistent and have hurt its ability to meet demand, said the people, asking not to be named because the details are private. The company may have to rely more on air freight to deliver consoles to retailers, cutting further into its profits, they said.“By air is at least 10 times more expensive than by sea when the world is in a normal condition, and the gap is likely wider now,” said Yasuda of Ace Research.Sony’s latest shipment forecast is still well above the 7.6 million mark, although not as high as it had targeted earlier, one of the people said.Sony declined to comment specifically on production figures or scalpers.“While we do not release details related to manufacturing, nothing unexpected has happened since PlayStation 5 mass production has started and we have not changed the production number for PS5,” a spokesman said.Inadequate supply risks derailing the cycle of a successful console introduction, with new software titles that in turn catalyze hardware interest. One major Japanese publisher was sufficiently spooked by the early market response that it’s held internal discussions over whether to delay its PlayStation 5 games, according to a person familiar with the talks.Retailers are taking extreme measures to stymie scalpers. GameStop Corp. didn’t tell its own staff about new console shipments to U.S. stores this week until an hour before arrival so real customers could buy them. In Japan, Nojima Corp. had workers manually review every purchase order to screen out scalpers. Yet resellers have already made about $35 million off of PlayStation and $24 million from the rival Xbox that launched at the same time, according to one estimate.Many customers blame Sony for not doing more to boost supply — and eliminate profits for scalpers.“The real test for the PlayStation 5 is whether the hardware would continue to sell well even when there’s enough supply,” said games industry consultant Serkan Toto. “You need good games to convince gamers to switch over to the PlayStation 5, you need more outside publishers to release games on the PlayStation 5, and you need to ship more hardware.”(Updates with share price and Walmart quote)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Amazon Alabama Workers Get Chance for First-in-U.S. Union
Wed, 16 Dec 2020 23:33:49 +0000
(Bloomberg) — Amazon.com Inc. workers at an Alabama warehouse were given the go-ahead by federal regulators to vote whether to form what would be the first union at a U.S. facility of the e-commerce giant.An organizing drive became public last month when representatives of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union filed paperwork for an election to represent 1,500 frontline workers at the warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. None of Amazon’s hundreds of thousands of employees in warehouses across the U.S. is represented by labor unions.Amazon objected to the vote, saying in documents filed with the National Labor Relations Board that more than 5,700 employees would be covered by such a bargaining unit. That meant the union had likely gathered fewer signatures than it needed to mandate an election, lawyers for the e-commerce giant said.Under NLRB rules, 30% of workers must sign union authorization cards or petitions before the regulator steps in to oversee an election in which employees decide whether to form a union.“We’re administratively satisfied they met the 30% threshold,” said Terry Combs, assistant to the regional director for the NLRB’s Atlanta region.Amazon has created more than 5,000 jobs in Bessemer, with an average pay of $15.30 an hour, health care and other benefits, and 90% of surveyed employees said they’d recommend jobs at the company to friends, Heather Knox, a company spokesperson, said in a statement.“We don’t believe this group represents the majority of our employees’ views,” she said. “Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire, and we encourage anyone to compare our overall pay, benefits, and workplace environment to any other company with similar jobs.”The Washington Post reported earlier the news about the NLRB’s decision.Some Amazon workers in Europe belong to unions, but the world’s largest online retailer has managed to avoid organized labor in the U.S., even as it has grown to become the second-largest employer behind Walmart Inc. A small group of Amazon employees in a Delaware warehouse voted against joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in 2014.(Updates with Amazon statement in the sixth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Plug Power Extends Into e-commerce Space With Walmart
Wed, 16 Dec 2020 23:03:54 +0000
Plug Power (NASDAQ: PLUG) has announced that its hydrogen and fuel cell solutions are expanding into Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) e-commerce applications. The expansion began in August 2020 and will continue into 2021, according to a release. The Tuesday announcement said that across North America, Walmart has 37 distribution centers that use over 9,500 Plug Power-supported GenDrive fuel cell-powered vehicles.With about 40,000 units in the field and over 100 fueling stations in North America, Plug Power provides hydrogen solutions across the entire value chain, Plug Power COO Keith Schmidt said in an interview with FreightWaves.”[This expansion] gives us the opportunity to take our proven hydrogen fueling and powering solutions into Walmart's e-commerce space,” Schmidt said. He said the hydrogen solutions being deployed for Walmart e-commerce applications are very similar to Plug Power products already used for Walmart's grocery and retail networks.Schmidt said the company is seeing its customers grow and strengthen as they work to meet burgeoning consumer demand in e-commerce and home delivery. According to a release, Plug Power's products are helping customers meet increasing demand quickly. It said Walmart's material handling fleet that runs on Plug Power products operates at 99% uptime consistently. Schmidt said that Plug Power sees this as an opportunity to expand within Walmart, one of the company's foundational customers.”Walmart has been an innovator in fuel cell technology and an early adopter with Plug,” partnering with Plug Power to provide hydrogen fuel cell technology in Walmart's electric vehicles for its material handling fleet since 2010, Schmidt said.What's next for Plug Power?Plug Power has been growing 30%-40% steadily over the past several years, according to Schmidt. He said the company expects high growth in the future, mentioning its public growth plan for a $1.2 billion revenue stream by the end of 2024.He said the company started in the logistics material handling industry where hydrogen first made economic sense but is now moving into on-road applications, targeting Class 3-8 commercial vehicles.”In 2021, you'll see Plug continue to grow in the on-road vehicle segment and continue to expand its market reach in green hydrogen,” Schmidt said.He said the company has put the pieces in place for green hydrogen, acquiring United Hydrogen and Giner ELX in 2020. Plug Power will begin building green hydrogen plants in 2021, according to Schmidt.Click here for more FreightWaves articles by Alyssa Sporrer.Related Stories:Airbus sets sights on zero-emission aircraftEuropean Commission calls for conversion to zero-emission vehicles by 20505 trucking sustainability trends for 2021Pivot and flex: How traditional retailers can thrive in e-commerceSee more from Benzinga * Click here for options trades from Benzinga * Canadian Last-mile Delivery Startup Closes CAM Series A * CloudTrucks Secures .5M Series A(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Dow Jones Stocks To Buy And Watch In December 2020: Apple, Microsoft
Wed, 16 Dec 2020 21:09:33 +0000
Among the Dow Jones stocks, Apple and Microsoft are among the top stocks to buy and watch in December 2020.

Domino's to pay frontline workers nearly $10M in holiday bonuses in effort to ‘put people first'
Wed, 16 Dec 2020 19:50:35 +0000
Domino’s is shelling out holiday bonuses, the latest among major companies trying to reward its workers.

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