However, on November 16th, Walmart stock fell 8%. Now I’m feeling guilty. Because the day before the 8% drop, the Ninja Professional Blender 1000 arrived on my doorstep from Amazon.com, Walmart’s biggest competitor. You know, people like me who can’t be bothered to go to Walmart, or worse, don’t realize that you can order on Walmart’s website, are what caused the stock market’s bad day. As compensation, I will be returning the Ninja Blender unopened. Instead, I’m going to order Nutribullet from Walmart’s website. The good news is that it costs $25 less and takes up less space on your kitchen counter.
Full disclosure: I also own Amazon. If Amazon drops 8% in one day, you might need to change your purchasing decisions.
peter dodge
St. Augustine, Florida
small cap acquisitions
To the editor:
Discussions about the small-cap underperformance dilemma are making my head spin (“Small-cap stocks are finally making noise. Watch out,” Up & Down Wall Street, November 17). High interest rates and the prospect of low growth pose a Catch-22 challenge. Rather than wondering whether the recent surge in the Russell 2000 signals a permanent recovery or another false start, the solution is to forget about the index and focus on individual stocks. I insist. There are probably small clusters that work very well regardless of index. why? Because the combination of favorable valuations and the mission-critical end markets they serve, selective small-cap stocks are susceptible to acquisition by large-cap players seeking opportunistic “tuck-in” acquisitions. Because it will.
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rob seuss
Bethesda, Maryland
carbon tax
To the editor:
AXA’s latest Future Risks report lists climate change as the world’s No. 1 risk (“The fabric of society is fraying. This global CEO sees opportunity” interview, November 16) . AXA CEO Thomas Bouvard doesn’t mince words when calling for a plan to transition from fossil to clean energy. Social division, food insecurity, poverty and migration are among the effects of global warming that Bouvard worries about.
Unlike the European Union, Canada, Chile, Argentina, and even China, the United States still allows producers to dump carbon into the atmosphere for free. The cost of the resulting damages will be paid by the rest of us. Part of a logical transition plan would be for governments to start charging carbon producers for the pollution they pump into the air, and then handing that money back to the public as a dividend. This will accelerate the transition to clean energy while making costs affordable for average people.
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don campbell
Glenside, Pennsylvania.
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