Walmart Stocks Decline; Share Owners Loses Billions.

Walmart, the nation's biggest retailer, stunned investors with a disappointing guidance for growth and profit - causing the stock Wednesday to drop 9.5% to $60.37. The stock drop - the biggest in at least a decade - has erased $20 billion in shareholder wealth in just a few instants.
Such a massive erasing of shareholder wealth is bad for anyone who owns shares of Walmart - but the pain is especially concentrated since the company's ownership is highly concentrated. The top 10
largest owners of Walmart stock - who collectively hold two-thirds of the common shares outstanding - have seen $14.5 billion in wealth vanish today, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ.
Walmart's rapid drop is a massive wealth destruction event for some of the wealthiest people in America - many of whom are big owners of Walmart. Members of the Walton family, including Alice, Jim, John and S. Robson, not to mention famed investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway are huge owners of Walmart stock. Each is in the front line for one of the biggest implosions of a blue-chip stock in recent years.
The biggest hit is being delivered to Walton Enterprises, an investment vehicle controlled by several members of the Walmart family. This investment vehicle alone owns 1.4 billion shares of Walmart - or 44% of the total shares outstanding, S&P Capital IQ says. This investment vehicle took a $9.4 billion hit in the day's decline. And that doesn't even include several other Walton-family entities, including the 197 million shares owned by S. Robson Walton and another 194 million held in the Walton Family name. Add these three Walton entities together and the family itself took a nearly $12 billion hit in one day.

Sorry for their loss. You win some and you lose some.