If You'd Put $1,000 Into Walmart Stock 20 Years Ago, Here's What You'd Have Today

Walmart stock has been a buy-and-hold bust over the past couple of decades.

walmart stock
(Image credit: Getty Images)

When it comes to blue chip stocks that pay dividends and play defense, Walmart's (WMT) reputation is pretty tough to beat. And with the 2024 outlook for stocks becoming increasingly opaque, it's understandable if investors are tilting toward more defensive names, such as WMT, these days.

As a low-beta stock, Walmart stock does tend to hold up better than the broader market when everything is selling off. Walmart's fundamentals are essentially defensive, too. As an anchor of the consumer staples sector, Walmart sees comparatively stable demand through the business cycle. 

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Dan Burrows
Senior Investing Writer, Kiplinger.com

Dan Burrows is Kiplinger's senior investing writer, having joined the august publication full time in 2016.

A long-time financial journalist, Dan is a veteran of SmartMoney, MarketWatch, CBS MoneyWatch, InvestorPlace and DailyFinance. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Senior Executive and Boston magazine, and his stories have appeared in the New York Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News and Investor's Business Daily, among other publications. As a senior writer at AOL's DailyFinance, Dan reported market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and hosted a weekly video segment on equities.

Once upon a time – before his days as a financial reporter and assistant financial editor at legendary fashion trade paper Women's Wear Daily – Dan worked for Spy magazine, scribbled away at Time Inc. and contributed to Maxim magazine back when lad mags were a thing. He's also written for Esquire magazine's Dubious Achievements Awards.

In his current role at Kiplinger, Dan writes about equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities, funds, macroeconomics, demographics, real estate, cost of living indexes and more.

Dan holds a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a master's degree from Columbia University.

Disclosure: Dan does not trade stocks or other securities. Rather, he dollar-cost averages into cheap funds and index funds and holds them forever in tax-advantaged accounts.