Wal-Mart shares close higher on Monday, retailer to launch investment arm in an attempt to expand e-commerce presence

According to a March 20th statement by Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT), the retailer is to launch an investment arm in cooperation with retail start-ups, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in order to boost its e-commerce presence. Marc Lore, the executive of Wal-Marts e-commerce operations and also a former executive of on-line retailer Jet.com, is to head the venture, also known as Store No. 8. Jet.com was acquired by Wal-Mart last August in a deal valued at more than $3 billion.

Wal-Mart shares closed higher on Monday, while also marking their first gain in the past four trading sessions. The stock edged up 0.13% ($0.09) to $69.98, after touching an intraday low at $69.71, or a level not seen since March 13th ($69.71). In the week ended on March 19th the shares of the retail chain lost 0.30% of their market value compared to a week ago, which marked the second drop in the past seven weeks, but yet, the smallest one since the week ended on October 23rd 2016. The stock has pared its slump to 1.34% so far during the current month, following a 6.28% surge in February. The latter has been the largest monthly increase since January 2016. For the entire past year, Wal-Mart shares gained 12.76%.

In a speech at Shoptalk, a retail conference in New York, Marc Lore said that the venture would be located in Californias Silicon Valley and would cooperate with start-ups specializing in business fields such as robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and virtual and augmented reality.

The start-ups are to remain separated from the broader organization, so that Wal-Marts bottom line in a short term is kept unaffected.

Daily and Weekly Pivot Levels

With the help of the Camarilla calculation method, todays levels of importance for the Wal-Mart stock are presented as follows:

R1 – $70.05
R2 – $70.12
R3 (Range Resistance – Sell) – $70.18
R4 (Long Breakout) – $70.39
R5 (Breakout Target 1) – $70.62
R6 (Breakout Target 2) – $70.72

S1 – $69.91
S2 – $69.84
S3 (Range Support – Buy) – $69.78
S4 (Short Breakout) – $69.57
S5 (Breakout Target 1) – $69.34
S6 (Breakout Target 2) – $69.24

By using the traditional method of calculation, the weekly levels of importance for Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT) are presented as follows:

Central Pivot Point – $70.27
R1 – $70.82
R2 – $71.76
R3 – $72.31
R4 – $72.87

S1 – $69.33
S2 – $68.78
S3 – $67.84
S4 – $66.91