Financial services industry, look out. The boys of Bentonville are moving in, partnering with ShareBuilder, to offer low-cost investment services to customers. If you're not familiar with ShareBuilder, it's become a pretty big player in the discount brokerage industry by targeting a market most companies don't: people who might only have a few hundred dollars to invest. They offer a program that is ideal for dollar-cost averaging with small amounts of money. By combining thousands of orders for numerous stocks into a few big orders every Tuesday, the company is able to offer investors an opportunity to invest a little each week (or month) without facing prohibitively high transaction costs.
I haven't been able to get a lot of details on the plan, except that the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) service will offer customers a small discount from ShareBuilder's usual costs, depending on the number of trades per month. Wal-Mart describes the ShareBuilder partnership as a pilot project.
I like this a lot -- perhaps by advertising the program in-store, curious shoppers will take the company up on the offer to put a few dollars into shares of companies they're familiar with. By bringing the stock market into Wal-Mart, I believe we could see a lot of first-time investors starting to save for their future, and I think that's the goal here -- I doubt Wal-Mart thinks it can siphon off business from Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS).
I went into my local Wal-Mart the other day and couldn't find anything on this. Has anyone checked it out? Any thoughts on it?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-20-2007 @ 7:42PM
mike tyson said...
Im just wondering when or if layaway will start again el camino ave sacramento california.?
5-21-2007 @ 11:18AM
Nick Pasquine said...
Nice though but walmart's bottom feeders can't even afford gas much less "investing"
5-21-2007 @ 11:38PM
Dave Straitjacket said...
I think this may be a sign of the disconnect that Wal Mart's upper management has with both customers and associates. They want a Wal Mart that someone of their income level would like to shop in, not the stores that they have now - filled with - eewwww - "poor people". I think that's part of the problem with their marketing right now. The people running the company are actually ashamed of the target demographic of the stores and are trying desperately to distance themselves from it.
5-22-2007 @ 2:12AM
Fran Pipkin said...
Save your money and invest it in something more worth while. If Walmart is still here in five years then invest.
5-22-2007 @ 7:31AM
M. Dillon said...
Actually,It's a smart move for both companies. First,WalMart will get the customers who don't have the money to open up an account with the Goldman-Sachs,and the such. Why? Because they are already there shopping. As for Sharebuilder,this will be another great source of revenue for the company. Think of the millions of folks who shop WalMart,and don't have a 401K plan,etc.;and,want to invest a few hundred a month opening up an account with them at four to thirteen dollars a pop,for commissions.
In closing I think that most of the comments above are wrong because the same was stated about companies like Leap Wireless and Metro PCS. Last time I've checked,these companies were making gobs of money/profit from the,"bottom feeders",and,"poor people".
6-11-2007 @ 11:05PM
J. Wilks said...
Wal-Mart is not full of poor people, it's full of everypeople. Most middle-class people I know shop there, even as they gripe about it. Most of those same people don't invest. There is a huge market gap there that Wal-Mart could fill.