Walmart - Prices are Up at the Discounter   Wednesday, May 19, 2010
By Gibbons Burke
 Walmart shares rallied by a 'very big' 1.8% on Tuesday, following up on a 'big' 1.2% gain on Monday, making for a 'very large' five-day percentage gain over the last five trading days after beating Wall Street earnings expectations. The stock was among just 40 of the names which make up the S&P 500 index to rally on Tuesday, but it was certainly the most prominent to evade the down-swiping claws of the bear. Just two stocks in that club had 'very big' gains - Verisign being the other.
To be sure, the bear took away much of the day's gains from the high of the day at $54.45 before closing at $53.71, but the close brought the stock back above the 200-day average price. Q: How has WMT fared in the past when it has seen a 'very big' one-day percentage gain in the month of May where the stock closes above the 200-day average price? A: According to the 16 previous occurrences of this event, EventEdge indicates that WMT has shown a somewhat bullish edge that peaks 26 trading days after the event. Thus, the projected date for the peak of the bullish edge relative to the current event date (Tuesday, 18 May 2010) is Wednesday, 23 June 2010. WMT rallies in 81% of the cases (13 of 16) by an average of 9.6% relative to the close on the event date. The average of the 3 declines is -2.5%. The overall return of the 16 cases is 7.3%, which, based on the close of WMT on the event date ($53.71), provides a target price of $57.63.
As you can see in the table below, and if you look closely at the chart below, you'll note that this event happened nine days ago. Since that event, the stock has been down about 5%, but is now down -1.9% from the close on the day of the first occurrence on May 5th. Click here to investigate this trading idea further in EventEdge®.
Click here for a technical chart of WMT which shows the 200-day average, the 13-week high-low range, and the 20-day high-low range bands. Gibbons Burke is editor of MarketHistory.com.
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| | Let variable values:
@ = GII.WMT.NYSE
theEvent = IF
1 value percent_move of @ is more than
(30 day average of 1 value percent_move of @ +
(2 * 30 day std_dev of 1 value percent_move of @
)
)
AND
@ is more than 200 value average of @
AND
Date is May
THEN 1
ENDIF
Date Day t t+5 t+9 t+20 t+26
05/21/1975 Wed 5.8 1.8 14.6 17.7 18.3
05/09/1979 Wed 5.3 -5.0 -3.7 -5.9 -2.3
05/06/1983 Fri 4.8 10.6 6.3 15.0 24.3
05/13/1986 Tue 4.6 3.2 9.6 14.6 14.6
05/28/1986 Wed 4.8 -1.0 -2.0 3.6 7.4
05/12/1989 Fri 3.5 7.2 4.8 7.8 9.2
05/29/1990 Tue 4.3 5.0 5.0 3.5 7.6
05/09/1991 Thu 5.0 -2.7 -0.9 -0.9 1.8
05/28/1992 Thu 2.9 3.3 0.2 -0.7 3.7
05/11/1995 Thu 3.7 0.5 -1.5 2.6 10.3
05/31/1995 Wed 4.2 2.0 5.0 8.0 7.5
05/08/1997 Thu 3.5 4.3 2.6 7.3 12.4
05/31/2000 Wed 8.7 0.4 -4.6 -2.8 6.8
05/14/2002 Tue 4.3 -1.4 -4.5 1.6 -1.6
05/05/2006 Fri 1.8 -1.5 -0.1 -0.1 0.6
05/25/2006 Thu 3.0 -3.3 -4.3 -3.1 -3.8
05/05/2010 Wed 1.4 -4.2 -1.9 NaN NaN
05/18/2010 Tue 1.8 NaN NaN NaN NaN
Avg 4.1 1.1 1.4 4.3 7.3
AvgPos 4.1 3.8 6.0 8.2 9.6
AvgNeg NaN -2.7 -2.6 -2.3 -2.5
PctPos 100.0 58.8 47.1 62.5 81.2
PctNeg 0.0 41.2 52.9 37.5 18.8
Maximum 8.7 10.6 14.6 17.7 24.3
Minimum 1.4 -5.0 -4.6 -5.9 -3.8
StdDev 1.7 4.2 5.4 7.0 7.7
ZStat 2.4 0.3 0.3 0.6 1.0
Variance 2.9 17.5 29.7 48.5 58.8
18 Occurrences | |
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