A Tale of Two Retailers, And More Uncertainty for Wall Street

Oh boy, what happened to the traditional holiday bounce?  Yeah, nowhere to be found this year as the Dow had a dreadful, 4.8%-down week…in only 4 days.  Yuck.

So, what’s next?  The index has broken support, but is badly oversold.  My guess – and it really is a guess – is that we see a bounce back to resistance.  After that anything could happen as “anything” seems to be the theme of 2011.

However, holiday shopping has now started, so I thought it topical to look at both the old and new in terms of retail experience. The old, of course, is symbolized by Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) (which, yes, has a large online component) as their main thrust is on brick and mortar.  There the situation doesn’t look so good.

On the “new” front, there’s probably no more appropriate stock than Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN).  They’ve also had a miserable time lately, but at least the stock sits firmly near a long uptrend line.  I like it as a long, and I own it.

I do hope everyone had a great holiday and that things improve in every regard for the last few weeks of 2011.