Walmart's miss pulls a major market segment lower

For many investors, Walmart is like an ocean liner. The retail colossus sails along, with stores seemingly everywhere and with infinite capacity to control its destiny despite, well, everything.

Thursday, however, Walmart's second-quarter earnings missed Wall Street estimates, and the shares slid 4.5% to $97.93.

Helped fuel market slide

The tumble was felt broadly across the stock market.

Walmart, which has a market capitalization of about $782 billion, was the third-worst performer among the stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, which fell 0.4% to 6,370.17.

Ahead of Walmart were First Solar , down 7%, and Pacific Gas & Electric , down 4.5%.

Walmart was also the worst performer among the 85 stocks in the S&P 500 Consumer Staples Sector. The sector was off 1.2% to 905.66.

Right behind Walmart in the Staples sector were:

• Costco Wholesale , down 2.5% to $969.68.
• Dollar General , down 2.1% to $112.49.
• Target down 1.7% to $97.06.

And Dollar Tree , down 0.7% at $112.59, was the 12th worst Staples decliner.

What happened?

The stock market is a bit jittery now.Nine of 11 S&P 500 sectors were lower on the day, with Consumer Staples the weakest of the nine decliners with a 1.2% decline. The S&P 500 itself has fallen 1.7% since peaking at 6,481 on Aug. 16. (The decline isn't big but is visible.)

It's August, typically a weak month.Plus there's been declines among the biggest or hottest stocks, including Palantir Technologies , down 17.8% since hitting an all-time high of $190 on Aug. 12. Amazon.com and Microsoft are off 5.2% and 5.5%, respectively, so far in August.

Walmart's estimate miss was due to surprising issues.Like settling lawsuits, reorganization costs and the like. One-off events, but the some investors may have been annoyed they weren't warned.

More Retail Stocks:

• Kroger brings back paper coupons in a new way
• Target's customers walked away; How it plans to win them back
• Amazon analysts turn heads with surprising take on grocery plan

Economic worries.Job growth has slowed. There are conflicting signals about inflation, and Wall Street is uneasy about where Fed is headed next. Supermarket giant Kroger , a big Walmart rival, has started to close some 60 stores over the next 18 months.

Tariff worries. Walmart is a big importer of non-food goods. All of which may be affected by the Trump tariffs at some point. (A saving grace: The tariffs aren't as big as expected so far, and they're coming in gradually.) Overall, Walmart has raised prices maybe 1% since the end of the first quarter.

To be sure, Walmart raised its financial guidance and said the “impact of tariffs has been gradual enough that any behavioral adjustments by the customer have been somewhat muted.”