For many investors, putting money in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is like investing in America. Wal-Mart stands for everything that your stereotypical middle American does; sprawling properties, gigantic packages of Suave(TM) and Snickers(TM) and Snoop Dogg (TM, probably). Wal-Mart is to retail what the Hummer is to automobiles. Big, resource-hungry, and not entirely respectful of the little guy. And along with America, Wal-Mart seemed like the never-ending growth story. Sometimes I thought the Waltons' place in the billionaires' top 10 would never be equalled.

But some days, like today, the news seems to go a different way. Wal-Mart, emperor of homogenization, king of the price cut, sultan of squashing its competitors, posted a teensy 0.5% same-store sales growth in October. There's talk that the retailer might even (yikes! double yikes!) post so-called "negative growth" a.k.a. shrinking in the months to come.

Where Wall Street comes from, negative growth is a synonym for "run for the hills." From whence cometh our help, Americans?

In my opinion, our help cometh from Target Corp. (NYSE:TGT).