Newport Digital Technologies, Inc. announced this morning the successful introduction of its total RFID Solutions at the VICS Conference in Fayetteville, Arkansas. NPDT demonstrated its capabilities as a full RFID solutions provider, including displaying RFID tag programmers, kiosks, mobile computing readers, and tags.

Matthew Jones. Laboratory Manager for the Company’s RFID facility in Bentonville, Arkansas, said it was “important to showcase all of NPDT’s capabilities to potential partners and customers. The conference went a long way to introducing us to the RFID community and put us in the spotlight as the new participant with products and services superior to those presently available.”

Joseph Ray, Wal-Mart Account Manager for NPDT, added, “RFID solutions offered by Newport Digital Technologies puts the Company immediately alongside others currently in the sector. The traffic to our booth, the number of customers and vendors with whom we met, and

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Newport Digital Technologies, Inc. announced this morning that it is a Lab Sponsor to the University of Arkansas RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) Research Center at the Sam M. Walton College of Business.

“We are pleased to officially become a sponsor of the University of Arkansas RFID Research Center,” stated NPDT CEO Gary DeMel. “Our Company has made a commitment to bringing leading edge RFID solutions to market and we are excited to be a part of the leading RFID research center in the world. As we previously announced, Newport Digital has opened up a sales and research and development office in Bentonville, with proximity to Wal-Mart, and we are dedicated to developing strong ties to the University’s research center.”

“In the future RFID will provide numerous societal benefits including ensuring that your medical history pops up at the nursing desk as you are checked

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Newport Digital Technologies, Inc. announced earlier today the opening of an RFID sales and research and development (R&D) office in Bentonville, Arkansas to support the company’s introduction of end-to-end RFID solutions to the supply chain and retail market places. The newly appointed RFID Lab Manager and Wal-Mart Account Manager will report directly to NPDT Chief Operating Officer Weiling Tsao and will work closely with NPDT’s Taiwan-based R&D partners, the Institute for Information Industry (III) and Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).

“We enthusiastically welcome both Matthew and Joseph to our management team,” stated Mr. Tsao. “These gentlemen bring a wealth and experience in the RFID field. Their training, work experience and proximity to Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer who is clearly committed to leveraging all that RFID technology has to offer, gives NPDT tremendous resources as we work to launch our RFID solutions.”

“For the past four years I have been

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Solid earnings from Walmart today. I'm not surprised, as I've been following the story for awhile now. Although the market is telling us recovery is here, I still feel many, many consumers are in much different situations from where they were a year or two ago. Walmart has been picking up new shoppers as price is becoming #1 for more consumers than ever before. The numbers aren't anything eye-popping, just steady results. (a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wal-mart-posts-unexpected-profit-increase-2009-08-13?siteid=yhoof2"via Marketwatch/a).br /br /blockquoteWalmart Stores Inc. said Thursday fiscal second-quarter profit came in at $3.44 billion, or 88 cents a share, vs. $3.45 billion, or 87 cents a share, a year earlier. Sales in the quarter ended July 31 fell to $100.9 billion from $102.3 billion, the No. 1 U.S. discounter and the world's largest retailer said.br /br /Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters estimated that the Bentonville, Ark., company's profit was 86 cents ...

The fund filings are out. If you're wondering, these are the funds I like to track, and sometimes follow by buying the same stocks:br /br /-George Soros (Soros Fund Management)br /-Seth Klarman (Baupost Group)br /-John Paulson (Paulson amp; CO.)br /-Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway)br /-David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital)br /-Bill Ackman (Pershing Square Capital Management)br /-Steve Cohen (SAC Capital Advisors)br /br /Today, I'm going toa href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchiveamp;sid=a_RT.rEuHt4M" take a quick look at Soros' holdings/a.br /br /blockquoteSoros Fund Management LLC, the investor’s hedge-fund firm, sold 5 million U.S. shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York-based firm’s remaining 32 million shares of the state-controlled oil company were valued at $963 million at the end of the quarter.br /br /The hedge fund also held 5.6 million shares of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Potash at the end of the quarter, compared ...

The news for US retailers is grim to say the least. But Justice Litle says investors can still make profits by shorting the most vulnerable firms in the industry. He picks three retail stocks that look overvalued in today’s climate.

This from Taipan Daily

At market extremes (where fortunes are most often won and lost), the wild outliers get closer to reality. Such is the case with the “mega-mall ghost town” scenario.

In the past two weeks, the financial press has been chock-a-block with headlines like “Commercial Property Loses Shelter” and “Struggling Retailers Press Struggling Landlords on Rent.”

“U.S. retailers are expected to begin a wave of post-holiday bankruptcy filings,” the Wall Street Journal writes, “altering the landscape at malls and on main streets across the country.”

One mall store manager – who requested his name not be mentioned – told the WSJ he expects more returns than sales on some days.

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Dragged down by plunging gasoline prices and an auto industry struggling for survival, retail sales fell by 1.8% in November for a record fifth straight month, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

But a historic drop in retail gasoline prices and auto sales may have exaggerated the decline.  Filling-station sales mirrored the recent drop in prices from $4 a gallon in July to less than $2 a gallon recently. Auto sales fell 2.8%, confirming automakers’ assertions that business had sunk to the lowest levels in decades.

Excluding gasoline, which fell by almost 15%, retail sales fell just 0.2%.

In fact, without sales of autos, gasoline and building materials, sales actually rose 0.5%, the most since May.

“The financial markets were braced for a horrific retail sales report for November, but the numbers were actually not so bad,” Mark Vitner, a senior economist for Wachovia Corp. (

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Retail experts are predicting one of the most dismal holiday shopping seasons in decades this year – a crucial stretch that will set the stage for poor retail sales throughout 2009.

As the U.S. economy decelerates, pummeled by the aftershocks of the worldwide financial crisis, consumers have been hit from every direction: Unemployment has spiked, and will continue to rise, economy unwinds and continues to work through the aftershocks of the global credit crisis, consumers have been beset on all sides. Unemployment is up, home prices are down, and credit is hard to come by.

And although inflation is beginning to moderate somewhat – slowing to a pace of 3.7% year-over-year in October – it’s still well above the U.S. Federal Reserve’s desired target rate of 2.0%.

With rampant inflation no longer artificially propping up consumer spending figures, retail sales have really started to lose their

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