Picture this: the biggest company in the world by revenue decides one morning that the New York Stock Exchange, home for over fifty years, just doesn’t fit anymore. So it packs up and moves across the street to Nasdaq. Sounds almost casual, right? But when that company is Walmart, it’s anything but.
Yesterday, Walmart pulled off the largest exchange switch in history. Same ticker — WMT — but now trading alongside Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia instead of JPMorgan and Exxon. And Wall Street isn’t treating it as a minor administrative change. Investors are calling it a declaration of war on the old perception of Walmart as “just” a discount retailer.
Why Nasdaq Actually Matters More Than You Think
Let’s be honest — most of us think stock exchanges are interchangeable plumbing. But optics matter hugely in markets. Nasdaq has become the unofficial home for any company that wants the world to see it as tech-first. Think about it: Amazon never left, Tesla jumped over years ago, even Costco quietly made the move a quarter-century back.
By joining them, Walmart is sending a crystal-clear message: “We’re not the low-margin box-mover from the 1990s anymore.” And investors I follow are taking it seriously.
A CEO Who Gets It
Doug McMillon, soon to step down in January, went on television the morning of the switch and basically said the quiet part out loud:
“Walmart’s changed a lot, and we’re trying to make sure everybody knows it.”
That’s not corporate-speak. That’s a CEO who understands branding at the highest level. The exchange switch is marketing on steroids — and it’s free.
The AI Flywheel Almost Nobody Talks About
Here’s where it gets really interesting. Everyone knows Walmart is huge. What most miss is how AI is turning that scale into an almost unfair advantage.
With over 10,000 stores and millions of daily transactions, Walmart sits on an ocean of first-party data. Most retailers would kill for even a fraction of it. Now throw generative AI on top and things start moving fast:
- Perfect demand forecasting → less overstock, fewer markdowns
- Automated replenishment → trucks show up exactly when needed
- Route optimization for 6,000+ trucks → millions saved in fuel
- Smart cameras that spot theft in real time → shrinkage drops dramatically
- Dynamic pricing on digital shelf labels → margins creep higher
Each improvement sounds small. Multiply by Walmart scale and you’re talking billions in profit uplift. No exaggeration.
The Advertising Business Hiding in Plain Sight
If AI in the supply chain is impressive, the retail-media network is straight-up brilliant.
Walmart Connect — their advertising platform — is growing something like 25-30% year-over-year while the core retail business grows mid-single digits. Margins on ads? North of 70%. That’s pure profit rocket fuel.
And because they own the stores, the app, the website, and now Vizio TVs, they can follow you from couch to checkout with closed-loop attribution. Amazon can do this too, of course, but Walmart has something Amazon will never have: physical locations in every small town in America.
“Advertising sits right at the center of Walmart’s data, AI, and automation push.”
– Kevin Simpson, Capital Wealth Planning
When a portfolio manager says that, you listen.
Chasing Amazon — and Maybe Passing It in Some Ways
Say what you want about Jeff Bezos, but he wrote the playbook Walmart is now following to the letter. Raise revenue per employee. Automate everything. Build a moat with logistics. Layer high-margin services on top.
The difference? Walmart serves the half of America that still cares deeply about price. When money gets tight, those customers don’t trade down from Walmart — they’re already there. That makes the stock oddly defensive for something growing this fast.
And then there’s same-day delivery. Amazon built it first, but Walmart is scaling it faster in many markets simply because the stores already exist. A fulfillment center in a cornfield can’t beat a supercenter five miles from your house.
Valuation: Yes, It Looks Expensive — Until It Doesn’t
Here’s the pushback I hear constantly: “Walmart trades at 32 times earnings — that’s crazy for a retailer!”
Fair point. Until you reframe it as a hybrid tech/retail company where the tech pieces are growing 5-10× faster than the legacy business and carry triple the margins. Suddenly 32× doesn’t feel so heroic anymore.
The Nasdaq move helps that narrative stick. It’s a permission slip for the market to value Walmart more like Costco (35×) or Target when it was loved (rare these days) than like a traditional grocer.
What About the Dividend?
Oh, right — they still pay one. A growing one. Yield around 1.1% today, but with 50 straight years of increases, it’s basically a bond that keeps getting better. Not many “tech” stocks can say that.
In a world where growth is getting harder to find, a company that can compound both capital gains and dividends at double-digit rates total return is rare air.
Where This Could Go in the Next 3-5 Years
Several top investors I respect have Walmart in their top pick for 2026 and beyond. One CIO told me privately she thinks it’s the best example of an “old economy” company successfully pivoting to new technology she’s ever seen.
If the advertising business keeps growing 25%+ and e-commerce keeps taking share, while AI continues shaving costs, the earnings power five years out could be almost double today’s run rate. That would make today’s multiple look laughably cheap in hindsight.
Perhaps the most interesting part? Management isn’t done. The incoming CEO (still unannounced at time of writing) will inherit a company that has finally shed the “boring retailer” label for good.
That’s the kind of tailwind money can’t buy.
So yeah, Walmart moved to Nasdaq. But really, it just told the world it’s playing a completely different game now. And from where I’m sitting, it looks like they’re winning.
