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Walmart Inc. (WMT) is the largest brick-and-mortar retailer in the world with about 10,500 locations in 19 countries worldwide. That's a dramatic change from nearly six decades ago when Sam Walton opened a single discount store in Rogers, Arkansas. The company went public and rapidly expanded eight years later.

The company operates an empire of brick-and-mortar stores under the Walmart name as well as its membership-only Sam's Club outlets and a growing e-commerce business. The company generated $648.1 billion in revenue and consolidated net income of $15.5 billion in Walmart's FY 2024, ended Jan. 31, 2024.

Walmart's acquisitions have been aimed at sharply expanding its presence in e-commerce to fend off digital retailing giant Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN). Walmart ventured abroad in 2018 and paid $16 billion for a majority stake in Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce company. It bought out other investors and increased its hold in the company and India's market in 2023.

Jet.com was founded in 2014 and is one of the fastest-growing U.S. e-commerce companies. Walmart acquired Jet.com for about $3.3 billion in 2016 to compete with Amazon.com. Jet.com was an independent company before the acquisition. Jet.com founder Marc Lore joined the Walmart executive leadership team as part of the deal.

Walmart reported FY 2024 U.S. e-commerce net sales of $65.4 billion, up 22.47% year-over-year (YOY), aided by its expanded e-commerce business.

Walmart doesn't provide breakdowns of the revenue that each acquisition contributes to the company.

ShoeBuy, rebranded as Shoes.com, was launched in 1999 as an online footwear retailer. The company was purchased by IAC in 2006. Walmart subsidiary Jet.com acquired ShoeBuy from IAC for approximately $70 million in 2016. This acquisition took place just months after Walmart acquired Jet.com.

This deal marks a key expansion for Jet.com into footwear retailing, an area not previously represented by the online retailer. It also marks a move by Walmart to provide a comprehensive e-commerce experience similar to Amazon.

Bonobos was launched in 2007 as an internet-based apparel brand and eventually expanded to include a growing number of brick-and-mortar locations as well in 2012. The company was independent at the time of its acquisition by Walmart in mid-2017. Walmart appointed Bonobos founder and CEO Andy Dunn to lead Walmart's effort to help boost sales of online consumer brands after the takeover.

The Bonobos deal came a few months after Walmart acquired another online apparel company, ModCloth, although ModCloth was sold two years later.

Moosejaw specializes in outdoor recreation gear and apparel. It was founded in 1992 and ultimately developed a retail presence primarily online. Moosejaw counted several private equity firms as major stakeholders at the time of its purchase by Walmart in 2017. Moosejaw was allowed to operate as a standalone brand under Walmart. It retained its site and physical stores as well as its operations in Michigan.

The deal expanded Walmart's presence in the market for outdoor recreational gears at a time when Amazon was also growing rapidly.

As part of our effort to improve the awareness of the importance of diversity in companies, we have highlighted the transparency of Walmart's commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and social responsibility. This chart illustrates how Walmart reports the diversity of its management and workforce. This shows if Walmart discloses data about the diversity of its board of directors, C-Suite, general management, and employees overall, across a variety of markers. We have indicated that transparency with a ✔. 

Walmart had a market cap of $636.59 billion as of Oct. 8, 2024.

Walmart's e-commerce unit faced a $1 billion loss in its early years. Selling ModCloth was reportedly a move toward revamping its online sales strategy.

It has indeed. Walmart reported $559.1 billion in total revenue in its fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2021. That figure increased to more than $648.1 billion in its fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2024.

Walmart has been strategically focused on expanding its presence in e-commerce after establishing a firm grip on the brick-and-mortar retail sector. It’s the largest brick-and-mortar retailer in the world with about 10,500 locations in 19 countries. It’s added notable e-commerce sites Flipkart,Jet.com, and ShoeBuy since 2016. Walmart reported FY 2024 U.S. e-commerce net sales of $65.4 billion, up 22.47% year-over-year.

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The Japan-based owner of 7-Eleven stores, Seven & i Holdings, is shaking up its operations as it faces a takeover effort by the Canadian parent of Circle K stores.

Seven & i announced Thursday that it was establishing an intermediate holding company, which will be a wholly owned subsidiary called SST, containing its supermarket food business, specialty store and other businesses.

It explained the move was to accelerate a possible initial public offering (IPO) of SST "in order to unlock value for the company's shareholders and other stakeholders."

Seven & i noted that the SST group's "growth story differs from the convenience store business's."

Canada's Alimentation Couche-Tard had offered $39 billion for Seven & i, which the firm rejected last month. However, Seven & i said it was open to talks if the bid was increased, and yesterday said that it had received "a revised confidential, private and non-binding proposal" without elaborating.

On its earnings call today, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ryuichi Isaka was quoted as saying that Seven & i would "respond sincerely to proposals which will increase our corporate value."

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Domino's Pizza (DPZ) shares fell Thursday morning when the pizza delivery giant's better-than-expected profit was offset by a revenue miss and soft guidance.

The company reported third-quarter earnings per share (EPS) of $4.19, $0.59 above the consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha. Revenue was up 5.1% year-over-year to $1.08 billion, but that was short of forecasts.

Domino’s said the performance was driven primarily by higher revenue from its supply chain, U.S. franchise advertising, and U.S. franchise royalties and fees. The company noted the supply chain gains came mostly from a rise in order volumes and an increase in the "food basket pricing to stores."

Gross margin at U.S. company-owned stores climbed 1.0 percentage point, which it attributed to "sales leverage due to higher customer transaction counts."

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Russell Weiner explained that the results demonstrated the company's strategy is working "despite a pressured global marketplace."

Domino’s warned that full-year performance will be affected by a "challenging macroeconomic environment and its impact on current business trends across the globe." It now sees 2024 global retail sales growth of 6%, down from at least 7%.

Shares of Domino's Pizza, which were basically flat year-to-date through Wednesday's close, slipped about 2% soon after the opening bell.

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Shares of TD Bank (TD) are falling in premarket trading on a report that the Canadian bank is set to pay around $3 billion in penalties and accept limits on its U.S. growth over charges it failed to curb money laundering by drug cartels.

According to , the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is expected to place a limit on how much the bank's U.S. retail operations can grow.

In a previous report, the said TD's U.S. unit planned to plead guilty to criminal charges to resolve a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) probe into money laundering allegations tied to a Chinese crime operation.

In August, TD Bank Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bharat Masrani said the bank was working with U.S. regulators and law enforcement to resolve the issues.

TD Bank posted an unexpected third-quarter loss that month as it set aside billions of dollars in anticipation of the fines over the probe into its anti-money-laundering (AML) practices.

The Canadian lender last month said that Masrani would be stepping down in April 2025 and announced a succession plan for the CEO.

Shares of TD Bank, which didn't immediately respond to an request for comment, were down 4.5% in premarket trading Thursday. They had been 1.7% lower on the year through Wednesday's close.

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Oracle (ORCL) shares hit a record high Wednesday following a report that ChatGPT maker OpenAI is looking beyond Microsoft (MSFT) to supply servers, paving the way for a potential new partnership with the enterprise software giant.

Tech industry focused publication reported that OpenAI’s leadership recently told staff that the company planned to take on a larger role in securing data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) chips, rather than relying exclusively on Microsoft.

In June, the company rented Oracle servers at a new data center in Texas with limited input from Microsoft, according to the report. At the time, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman said that the software company’s Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) would allow it to scale, while Oracle CEO Larry Ellison pointed out that AI leaders such as OpenAI are turning to the company for its fast, cost-effective AI infrastructure. 

Oracle shares have surged around 25% in the past month and gained nearly 70% year-to-date through Wednesday’s close, boosted in part by a recent multicloud partnership with Amazon’s (AMZN) cloud business.

The stock rose 2.3% to close Wednesday's session at $178.29, after hitting an all-time high of $178.61.

Below, we take a closer look at Oracle's weekly chart and use technical analysis to point out important price levels to watch out for.

Oracle shares traded within a three-year rising wedge before staging a decisive volume-backed breakout above the pattern last month.

Since that time, the stock has continued to trend sharply higher, though share turnover has decreased following the initial breakout.

While, the relative strength index (RSI) confirms bullish price momentum, it also cautions of short-term overbought conditions with a reading above 80. It’s worth pointing out that the last time the indicator flashed above this threshold in June last year, the stock underwent a correction of around 22% over the following six months.

We’ll now identify three important lower chart area that could come into play during pullbacks and use a bars pattern to project a price target if the stock continues its long-term uptrend.

The first location to monitor sits around $146, an area on the chart where the shares could find initial support around the July swing high and wedge pattern’s top trendline.

Selling below this level could see the shares revisit the $127 level, a region just below the wedge’s lower trendline that would likely encounter support from multiple highs on the chart between June 2023 and May this year, which also closely aligns with the 2024 August low and upward sloping 50-week moving average (MA).

A deeper correction could bring the psychological $100 round number into play. Investors would likely look for buying opportunities in this area near the closely-watched 200-week MA and prominent peaks and troughs that formed on the chart from October 2021 to December last year.

A bars pattern uses historical trends to predict future moves. To apply this technique on Oracle’s chart, we take the stock’s trend higher from October 2022 to June last year and overlay it from the August low, which projects a price target of around $250.

We selected this earlier trending period because it began from the rising wedge’s lower trendline, similar to how the stock’s current move higher started. Interestingly, the prior trend played out over 36 weeks, meaning a comparable move could potentially last until early April if price history were to rhyme.

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The cost of living likely didn’t rise much in September, as a continuing trend of cooler inflation was a relief for household budgets and the economy.

Forecasters expect Thursday's Consumer Price Index report to show consumer prices rose 0.1% in September, down from a 0.2% increase in August, according to a survey of economists by and . That would mean consumer prices rose 2.3% over the past year, down from a 2.5% annual increase in August. That would be a fresh low since February 2021, and one step closer to the Federal Reserve’s goal of a 2% annual rate. 

“September will be another good month for inflation,” Bernard Yaros, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a commentary.Should the report match expectations, it would be the latest evidence showing inflation is back to running at a mild tempo after surging in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. Cooling inflation can give household budgets a break in two ways: shoppers won’t see rapidly rising price tags, and borrowing costs for all kinds of loans fall as the Federal Reserve rolls back the high interest rates it maintained in order to push down inflation.

Although cooler inflation could help justify the Fed's rate cuts, policymakers may be in no hurry to slash rates quickly like they did in September. The job market remains resilient despite high interest rates, meaning that the Fed is under little pressure to cut rates quickly to bolster the economy.

Financial markets have ruled out a super-sized rate cut when the central bank’s policy committee next meets in November, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, which forecasts rate movements based on fed funds futures trading data. Now market participants have priced in a smaller 0.25 percentage point cut, with a 21% chance that the Fed will leave interest rates as they are.

There are a few areas where prices likely still rose rapidly, keeping “core” inflation, which excludes volatile prices for food and energy, running hotter than the Fed would like. Prices for used cars likely rose 1% over the month, while airline tickets increased 0.5%, according to a forecast by economists at Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, increases in housing and car insurance are likely leveling off after surging earlier in the year.The median forecast by economists expects core prices rose 0.2% in September after a 0.3% increase in August, making for a 3.2% rise over the year, the same annual rate as the month before. 

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