Following the same path we have been on for the last many months, Wal-Mart showed strength almost singularly in the offline retail panoply. The overall results reported yesterday and today show the worst growth rate since the commerce department started tracking retail in aggregate. A decline of 2.8 percent is rough. And, even taking out auto, fuel and building supplies, the rest of retail declined by .5 percent, which in itself shows that every sector is being hit–even lux. We’ll look for online third quarter results for the online retail market out soon and cross our fingers.