Walmart and Nvidia Walk Into an Earnings Week — Only One of Them Is Cheap
Retail sentiment is piling into both names ahead of their May reports, but the math only works for one of them
Ticker Ratings
Two of retail trading's favorite names report this week, and the vibes could not be more different. $NVDA hits the tape on May 20th with analysts expecting 115% EPS growth and 79% revenue growth — and somehow trading at a 28x forward PE, which, for a company with eleven consecutive up sessions and an RS line at all-time highs, is practically bargain-bin territory. IBD's earnings cheat sheet flagged it as the cleaner setup of the week, and social sentiment is aggressively long.
Then there's $WMT, reporting May 21st with a respectable 8% EPS growth projection and genuinely impressive momentum in digital advertising (up 46% to $6.4B) and e-commerce (now second only to Amazon). But Walmart is trading at 50x PE. Fifty. For a grocery store that also sells fishing lures. The growth story is real — the price tag requires optimism that borders on spiritual.
Retail traders are long both, but the crowd that's actually done the math is camping in Nvidia's yard — and with AI infrastructure demand still accelerating, that tent isn't coming down anytime soon.