Walmart or Amazon? A Consumer Choice.

However, on Nov. 16, Walmart stock fell 8%. Now I’m struck with guilt because, the day before the 8% decline, a Ninja Professional Blender 1000 arrived at my doorstep—from Amazon.com, Walmart’s chief competitor. You see, it’s people like me—who are too lazy to go to Walmart or, worse still, fail to realize that you can order on Walmart’s website—who have caused the stock’s bad day. To make amends, I’m returning the Ninja blender unopened. Instead, from Walmart’s website, I will be ordering a NutriBullet that, I’m delighted to learn, costs $25 less and will leave a smaller footprint on my kitchen counter.

Full disclosure: I also own Amazon. Should Amazon go down 8% in one day, I may have to alter my purchase decisions.

Peter Dodge
St. Augustine, Fla.

Small-Cap Takeovers

To the Editor:
My head is spinning from the discussion of the small-cap underperformance dilemma (“Small-Cap Stocks Are Finally Making Some Noise. Be Careful,” Up & Down Wall Street, Nov. 17). High interest rates, coupled with prospects for weak growth, impose a Catch-22 conundrum. Rather than agonizing over whether the recent spurt in the Russell 2000 represents a lasting recovery or yet another false start, the solution, I contend, is to forget the index and focus on individual stocks. There is probably a small cluster that will do extremely well, regardless of the index. Why? Because favorable valuations, combined with the mission-critical end markets they serve, make selective small-cap companies susceptible to takeover by larger-cap players seeking opportunistic “tuck in” acquisitions.

Rob Suthe
Bethesda, Md.

Carbon Tax

To the Editor:
AXA’s most recent Future Risks report names climate change as the world’s No. 1 risk (“The Social Fabric Is Fraying. This Global CEO Sees Opportunity,” Interview, Nov. 16). AXA CEO Thomas Buberl doesn’t mince words in calling for a transition plan to move from fossil energy to clean energy. Social fragmentation, food crisis, poverty, and migration are among the consequences of global warming that concern Buberl.

Unlike the European Union, Canada, Chile, Argentina, and even China, the U.S. still allows producers to dump carbon into the atmosphere for free. The cost of the resulting damage is paid by the rest of us. Part of a logical transition plan would be for the government to start charging carbon producers for the pollution they put into the atmosphere and return that money to people as a dividend. This would speed the transition to clean energy while aiding average people in covering the cost.

Don Campbell

Glenside, Pa.

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