Scenes from the Memorial Day investing road: Takeaways on Walmart, Nvidia, and GameStop

In the spirit of Memorial Day weekend travels, I would like to take you through my investing week. It has been one chock-full of traffic, but also important clues on markets and the economy.

About that Walmart quarter

Walmart (WMT) reported an in-line first quarter, coupled with a slight second quarter warning. But that’s not going to cut it for a stock that’s up 131% over the past five years. At a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 31 times, Walmart is valued as a growth stock — and growth looks to be slowing.

Some notes:

• I still don’t buy that the US consumer is just fine despite $4-plus gas prices and rekindling inflation. Walmart’s quarter and outlook showed some consumer stress, full stop. I thank Walmart CFO John David Rainey for keeping it real with me in a live interview on our network. “Second quarter has started pretty much how the first quarter ended,” he said. “We continue to combat high fuel prices and what is maybe a little bit of a choppy consumer environment.”

• On a positive note, Target (TGT) definitely isn’t stealing market share from Walmart. So don’t think Target’s better first quarter results that the company shared on Wednesday are indicative of a turnaround at the expense of Walmart. If anything, I would be mildly worried that both retailers sounded cautious about the back half of the year.

Nvidia!

Nvidia’s stock declined this past week after a big quarter and outlook.

First of all, why is the stock meh? It’s because Nvidia’s top-line growth rate is slowing down. Jensen can hype artificial intelligence on his earnings calls and hundreds of post-earnings TV interviews. We know AI is going to be hot for the next 10 years. What we don’t know — or appreciate yet — is how fast Nvidia’s growth rates will cool down because it’s getting so big. The optics matter.

Second, speaking of optics, Nvidia has been pushed this year by Wall Street to increase its stock buyback program and raise its dividend. It was really sucking on both fronts. It moved to address these concerns by revealing a new $80 billion stock buyback plan and a dividend increase to $0.25 a share from a penny.

The problem, again, is optics. In doing this, Nvidia has reinforced its slower-growth status and signaled to the Street that value creation may be more driven by its capital returns program.

And third, margins are in focus on Nvidia. Gross margins only came in line with consensus and remain under a little pressure due to supply chain inflation. Nvidia gets no benefit of the doubt here because it’s Nvidia, and has to deliver outsized results.