Walmart has slipped back below a $1 trillion market cap, and The Motley Fool's take is that it probably stays under that line for a while. I read the piece and mostly nodded along. That doesn't always happen with those folks.

The way I'd characterize it, and this is my read rather than a verified figure, is that Walmart is an enormous revenue machine trading at something like a growth-company multiple. I won't quote exact numbers, because I haven't independently verified them, but the Fool's core point rests on simpler ground anyway: the price got ahead of the earnings. When a retailer briefly crosses a trillion dollars in value, the market hasn't discovered Walmart's true worth. It has paid an enthusiastic price for a business that still, at bottom, sells groceries. And groceries carry margins that don't compound fast enough to justify that valuation forever. So the stock stalls, the cap sits under a trillion, and nobody should be surprised.

The Fool's argument, as I read it, credits Walmart with genuinely improving e-commerce and a real, growing advertising business. I'll take that as their characterization, and it sounds right to me. But the piece's own logic is that those strengths sit on top of a low-margin core. Strong layers on a thin foundation. Thin foundations take a long time to change.

I've watched this movie before, just with different actors. My recollection of the late 1990s is of General Electric as the most admired company in the country, trading at a multiple that belonged to a far faster-growing business. It took years for that to mean-revert, and when it did, GE hadn't collapsed overnight. The price simply came down to meet the earnings. Coca-Cola after 1998 was similar in my memory: a wonderful business, patient shareholders, and a stock that went roughly sideways for years while the valuation bled off. Nobody who held Coke through that stretch was wrong about the company. They were just early on the price. I'm giving you these from four decades of watching markets, not from a fact sheet, so weigh them accordingly.

That's the distinction I'd want anyone to walk away with. Walmart slipping under a trillion dollars is not a verdict on the business. It sells groceries in a recession, in a boom, during a pandemic, and during whatever we're calling this market. It's a verdict on the price, which got a little enthusiastic.

If you own it through a total market index fund, as I suspect many of you do, none of this requires action. The index doesn't care whether Walmart is worth $900 billion or $1.1 trillion today. It just holds it, in proportion, and lets the earnings do the arguing over time. That approach has beaten most attempts at being clever about exactly this kind of thing.

The interesting question, the one I can't answer, is whether Walmart's newer businesses eventually earn it a permanently higher multiple. Maybe. Companies do change their character, though I'd want several more years of evidence before paying up for that story.

So if Walmart reclaims the trillion sometime next year, fine. The earnings caught up. If it takes five years, that's fine too. The company will still be selling groceries either way. Patience and consistency, same as always.

As usual, this is my perspective and not professional financial advice. Do your own thinking, or talk to someone licensed.