Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD), a retailer whose competitive colleagues include Target (NYSE: TGT), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), wants to improve its brand equity and find a new path to growth. As such, it's willing to employ all kinds of initiatives, especially ones that will form a nice image with the consumer during this dreadful economic contraction.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Sears is trying out a program that offers protection against the risk of investing in an expensive appliance during a time when job security is not as secure as it used to be.

The program will run for a specified time period beginning next week, and the basic gist is this: buy an appliance priced $399 or higher on a Sears credit card and, and if you lose your job, Sears will credit one twelfth of the cost every month. Still no job after one year? Keep the appliance, your debt will be forgiven.

When Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) changed its corporate slogan from "Always Low Prices" to "Save Money. Live Better" over a year ago, little did the retailer know that a recession would pour many new customers into its doors for bargains. With millions of families still strapped for cash, the retailer is still booking green at a time when many retailers are seeing red on the bottom line. The question, then, becomes this: can Wal-Mart retain its newer customer legions once the economy returns to normal (whatever normal is)?

Retailing behemoth Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) won't be aggressively rolling in health clinics into its retail stores in 2009, as it has scaled back its plan to 31 locations with clinics from the original estimate of about 400 stores in 2009. Wal-Mart even had as many as 77 locations with in-store clinics in 2008, so it has drastically rolled back its plans here. What happened?

The recession happened, that's what. The gap from the original 77 clinics to the present 33 occurred when venture capital-funded clinics had their funds dry up amid the credit crunch of late 2008 and they haven't returned yet. Although Wal-Mart sees health clinics as a still-untapped opportunity in its stores, they won't be coming to every possible Wal-Mart location any time soon. Indeed, former CEO Lee Scott said that it would take five to seven years to get 2,000 clinics inside Wal-Mart locations. Wonder where that estimate is now?

Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD), which competes with Walgreen (NYSE: WAG), CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS), and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), saw a big increase in volume on Wednesday after it reported earnings for the first quarter. In fact, as Douglas McIntyre observed, shares of Rite Aid were up 5% at one point during yesterday's session. However, the shares ended up losing their green status by the close of trading. Rite Aid actually lost 3% when all was said and done. What does it all mean?

Well, Rite Aid did beat analyst forecasts by a wide margin. The call was for a loss of 13 cents per share. Rite Aid lost only 6 cents per share once adjustments are made. Revenues dipped a little over 1%, and same-store sales, after excluding the effect of the Brooks Eckerd acquisition, increased 1.5%. Interestingly, the mix of this increase is as follows: the pharmacy sales went up 3.1% on a comparable basis, and the non-pharmacy sales went down 1.4% on the same basis.

Kroger (NYSE: KR), a supermarket chain that competes with Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), Costco (NASDAQ: COST), and Supervalu (NYSE: SVU), issued its Q1 earnings report today. Not much came of it, though. The stock, as of this writing, isn't doing much in afternoon trading. Too bad for shareholders, because the bottom line beat the analysts.

According to the earnings preview from Michael Fowlkes, Kroger was expected to deliver around 61 cents per share. Well, Kroger earned 66 cents per share. The number improved last year's performance by 8 cents. Revenues were essentially flat. Same-store sales increased a little over 3%. When you think about it, Kroger did pretty well.

For private equity investors, one of the worst sectors has been retailing. Just look at some of the failed deals: Goody's, Linens 'n Things, Mervyns, and so on.

Despite the carnage, it looks like private equity operators are seeing opportunity in the sector. For example, CCMP Capital Advisors recently agreed to pay $202 million for defunct Eddie Bauer.

And, this week we got another deal: BC Partners announced a $350 million direct investment in Office Depot (NYSE: ODP).

Today was one of those market days where you just felt like the stock market was headed lower no matter what. A report from the World Bank showing lower recovery is expected in 2009 and in 2010 did not help. It took the sails out of the commodity sector and therefore out of stocks.

With little economic data to center on, traders just continued the momentum of selling to take profits. We are also seeing a reversal here where now the market needs great news to rally.

Here are today's closing bell levels:

Dow 8,339.01 -200.72 (-2.35%)
S&P 500 893.04 -28.19 (-3.06%)
Nasdaq 1,766.19 -61.28 (-3.35%)

Top 10 Analyst Calls

Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY) has seen resurgent competition from mass retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT); are the employees of either retailer better? Best Buy seems to think so. Some of the newer advertising indicates that Best Buy employees are better at helping customers than Wal-Mart employees.

Although Wal-Mart has greatly enhanced the consumer electronics sections of its supercenter locations in the last 18 months, do the employees really know the ins and outs of all the new technology? Wal-Mart seems to really want to step up its competitiveness against Best Buy and others, but does it have the backbone to do so outside of just the products?

Today was a negative market from the start of trading, and the economic data just confirmed the selling, as hunting for green shoots looked more like hunting for four-leaf clovers. It seems that those analysts and economists saying that the market has risen too far and too fast are getting some more ears than in recent weeks.

The housing data showed a dip after two months of rising data, and the New York Empire Manufacturing data came in weaker than expected. Even the Iran turmoil after the election failed to rally oil. Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 8,613.04 -186.22 (-2.12%)
S&P 500 923.81 -22.40 (-2.37%)
Nasdaq 1,816.38 -42.42 (-2.28%)

Top 10 Analyst Calls

Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), the electronics mecca that competes with retailers such as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), Target (NYSE: TGT), Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD), and GameStop (NYSE: GME), will be issuing earnings for the first fiscal quarter on Tuesday, June 16. According to this source, Best Buy will see a decline in net income. Analysts believe that the retailer will do $0.34 per share, which represents a drop of about 20%.

But, according to that same source, Best Buy has beaten the analysts at their game in the last two quarters. If you ask me, I think the company has a good chance of beating the forecast yet again. With all the euphoria in the equities market as of late, and with all the talk about the recession possibly coming to an end late this year, I feel that consumers must have been in a better mood in the most recent quarter. And one would assume a big name like Best Buy would get its share of the traffic.

Has your broker repeatedly sold you on the "safe" investment vehicle, the mutual fund? Investing in a wide variety of prominent companies, with solid, long-term track records, mutual funds have been an easy-to-understand and popular investment choice for decades.

Mutual funds are hugely diversified, holding large stakes in recognizable names such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Citigroup (NYSE: C), Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), General Electric (NYSE: GE), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), and Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM).

Last time I covered Talbots (NYSE: TLB), I was very bearish. I didn't like the stock's prospects. Since then, it's been up. The retailer, which counts Macy's (NYSE: M) and Ann Taylor (NYSE: ANN) as colleagues, has also seen its stock nearly double since the beginning of the year. But the company is still struggling, as the numbers from the fiscal first quarter clearly show. What am I missing?

Revenues from continuing operations declined 26%. The net loss on an adjusted basis was 23 cents per share. That was worse than last year's results for the similar quarter. Much worse. There was a profit of 42 cents per share at that time. The most dismal aspect of the current quarter can be found in the same-store sales statistic. Comps were simply massacred. They plummeted almost 27%! What a bloodbath.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is taking a larger stab with its apparel lines than in the past and has joined up with teen sensation Miley Cyrus for a new value-priced clothing line -- naturally. Cyrus, star of Disney's Hannah Montana, has hooked up with designer Max Azria for the new line.

The new junior clothing selection will include girls' tops, pants, t-shirts and shows -- all priced at under $20. Wal-Mart shoppers will see the new items in all Wal-Mart stores and at www.walmart.com sometime in August. If history holds, those same clothes will be falling apart from a few washing cycles sometime in December. Sorry, couldn't resist there. Quite a few relatives have told me about clothes from Wal-Mart literally falling apart after three months or so.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) has fared better than just about anyone in the recession, but its stock is down 9% so far for 2009. Why? Wal-Mart shares outperformed the market by a wide margin in 2008, but now that many investors are looking to prepare their portfolios to profit from a turnaround, there is concern that Wal-Mart will be unable to sustain its momentum once people spend more money.

To capitalize on the stock price pullback, Wal-Mart announced that it would spend as much as $15 billion to buy back its own stock. And at the company's annual meeting on Friday, recently-installed CEO Mike Duke said that "Our customers will stay with us when this economy turns around and they have more discretionary spending, I promise."

To counterbalance all the green shoots talk, take a walk on the dark side.

Exhibit 1: Chain store sales declined 5% in May, a significant decline that did exclude giant Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). Guess Joe Consumer still doesn't feel up to shopping much. And Wal-Mart said it will stop reporting monthly sales figures, something that many economists and investors find troubling because that will mean they are losing a key indicator on consumer spending.