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Wal-Mart's Cloudy Outlook Warrants Caution

By Don Dion

 About this article:
 Wal-Mart's performance is crucial for a number of retail and domestic consumer staples ETFs that are heavily exposed to the firm. In order to avoid getting burned, investors holding any of these funds as a play on the coming holiday season will need to pay close attention to the firm's performance. Wal-Mart has its strongest showings in the Consumer Staples SPDR , which has 10.4% of its weighting in WMT; Vanguard Consumer Staples , 9.4%; iShares S&P Global Consumer Staples Index Fund , 5.2%; and PowerShares Retail Portfolio , 5.15%. On Wednesday, the discount giant announced that its third-quarter earnings rose 3.2% thanks to improved productivity and inventory management, but the firm remained hesitant looking towards the holiday season. As the economic environment remains volatile for consumers, I advise investors to keep exposure to domestic consumer discretionary to a minimum. Until we experience more...

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