Despite recent decline in value of most securities on Wall Street, a few well-managed companies manage to stay ahead of the game. Wal Mart (WMT) is one of those companies.
I have a few shares of Wal Mart in my portfolio. I was going to sell it last year when I reallocated my portfolio from growth to more stable equities, but Verna encouraged me to hang on to it.
I like her intuition. Twenty-two percent growth in a year is pretty spectacular.
When you look at the lackluster performance of Wal Mart’s peer group, you can see that the retail industry, in general, is not doing too well for a variety of reasons. One of the problems with retailers is labor unions, which drive profits down and operational costs up. Wal Mart, while providing competitive wages and benefits, does not have unions as a factor.
I’m glad for two things: Verna’s intuition, and Wal Mart’s sensible policies on labor.
