Gas over $4 a gallon, grocery prices through the roof, stagflation, where does it end?  Calgon take me away?  Nope, Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) to the rescue. Even rich people will be heading their to buy milk, movies, and even a gun or two to protect themselves from poor people.  Wal-Mart's slogan, "Save Money. Live Better" makes sense to all Americans. Had you bet the farm on Wal-Mart at the start of the year you would be up 18%.  Shares of WMT now sit $3 away from their 52-week high, the range has been $42.09 to $59.09 over the last year.  With all the recent activity in the market moving ...

Everybody knows there is some kind of food crisis. Grocery prices are painful. Wal-Mart has rationed rice purchases. Mexico has had tortilla riots due to corn prices. Rice riots have occurred Asia. China introduced laws prohibiting conversion of human food crops to fuel.

However, who would have predicted a 5 standard deviation price move for an index of 60 foods, or a 16 standard deviation move in rice prices. No, that is not a typo. Bloomberg today reported a UN Food Crisis study and related price charts revealing this food Black Swan.

At the core of the definition of Black Swan is an unpredictable and unexpected price move that is way off the chart in terms of standard deviations from the mean.

Since 3 standard deviations theoretically encompasses 99.7% of all observations, 5 to 16 standard deviations is a shocker.

We’ll have to rely on businesses and

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