Looking at Social Media Chatter Surrounding Walmart's Corruption Charges

Social Market Analytic's focus pick this week is Walmart Stores, Inc., WMT, an operator of discount stores, supercenters, and neighborhood markets throughout the U.S. and worldwide. The week of April 23 began with news that the company had become the subject of a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation into allegations of bribery in its Mexican subsidiary. This development generated considerable negative market sentiment with the stock closing the week as the Dow's biggest loser, down 5.5%. During the week, SMA's metrics for WMT provided indication of negative price movement, the persistence of negative market sentiment and the end of the sell-off as WMT's S-Score indicated a reversal of trend as the stock began to recover.

Beginning in the late afternoon of April 22, SMA's S-Score for WMT entered a sharp downward trend from Positive into Negative territory. In the pre-market of April 23, WMT's S-Score moved dramatically lower to -3.57 (Extreme Negative), coincident with a spike up in its S-Volume metric indicating unusual, active social media content. The stock ended the April 23 session at $59.54, a decline of 4.66%. The behavior of SMA's S-Score measures market trading sentiment and can provide actionable signals for upcoming price movement. Negative market sentiment for WMT persisted in the pre-market of April 24 with an S-Score level of -3.42 (Extreme Negative) and a 104% increase in S-Volume confirming continuation of a negative market environment for the stock. WMT ended the April 24 session at $57.77, a further decline of 2.97%.

In the pre-market of April 25, WMT's S-Score reversed trend to -1.27 (Moderate Negative) indicating a relaxation of negative sentiment intensity. WMT closed trading that day at $57.36, a slight loss. The change in sentiment trend accelerated on April 26 to -0.13 (effectively Neutral) and continued to 0.72 (Moderate Positive) on April 27. WMT ended the week at $59.03, up 2.91% from the close of April 25, but down 5.5% net for the week.

Social Media data are noisy and complex. A single metric is insufficient to understand sentiment behavior over time. Our S-Factors are a family of metrics, including volatility, trend and volume measures, designed to provide a complete view of the social media signature for each security tracked in SMA's database. SMA's processing engine continuously updates our S-Factor metrics, capturing overnight and pre-market sentiment activities. Clients receive sentiment reports prior to the U.S. market open and on-demand throughout the day. We invite the reader to visit our website; investigate our market sentiment metrics for WMT, other stocks, industry sectors, and market indices; participate in our FAQ forum; and sign up for our Flash Report and Newsletter.