Wal-Mart Stores (WMT), which for years has touted its prowess at lowering prices, has been doing the opposite as it tries to bolster its bottom line amid stagnating sales.
A JPMorgan Chase (JPM) study of a Walmart Supercenter in Virginia found that the worlds largest retailer has raised prices by nearly 6% on average over the past six weeks, according to the New York Post. Reuters says it was the biggest sequential increase since JPMorgan started the study in January 2009.
Some Prices Hiked Over 60%
Some of the price hikes were considerably larger. For instance, the price of a 32-ounce bottle of Windex household cleaner jumped 50%, a 12-ounce box of Quaker Oats instant grits climbed 65% and a 50-ounce container of Tide detergent rose by more than 50%. A spokesperson for the Bentonville, Ark., company could not immediately be reached for comment.
The results of the price-hike study arent entirely surprising. Shares of Wal-Mart, which rose at the height of the recent recession, are down more than 2% this year amid lackluster performance at its U.S. stores, where same-store sales fell 1.1% during the 13 weeks ended April 30. When Wal-Mart announced a revamping of the management team overseeing these stores, including the departures of CEO and President of Wal-Mart U.S. Eduardo Castro-Wright and Chief Merchandising Officer John Fleming, current Wal-Mart U.S. CEO Bill Simon bluntly said, "our mandate is clear: increase customer traffic, make sure our products are relevant to our customer and never give an inch on price leadership."
I wonder what all the deflation apologists have to say about this? You know. You'll do OK in gold in the coming deflation because gold will fall in price, but be happy about that because gold will fall less in price than other things because of deflation.
The people who have their heads buried in the sand and pretend to others that things aren't going up in price like electricity, gas, car insurance and registration council rates etc. etc.
Inflation means people will not want to earn zero and close to zero interest on their money. They will be looking for ways to protect their money, which includes investing in hard assets like gold and of course gold equities.
