Macro Outlook
More on our favorite proxy for the troubled economy, Wal-Mart (WMT:NYSE): Last week the boys in the corner office in Bentonville warned Wall Street that October was going to be a real stinker.

They revised expectations for same-store sales in operation at least a year for the four-week period ending Oct. 27 downward by as much 75% to somewhere just over 1%.

In the end, they probably won't even do that well: Word has it that they missed even that forecast by 50%. Why are things going so wrong at the world's largest store? Two weeks ago, CEO Lee Scott told investors that customers just didn't understand how rich they really were. Now he claims that the company overloaded its stores with too many trendy attractive items.

More tonight…

Trading Tactics
The oil and gas volatility continues. This morning, December crude prices fell $1.40 to $59.35 a barrel, their lowest level since last Tuesday, signaling that a move back down to $57 could be in the cards. At the same time, December natural gas lost $0.31 to $7.51 per million British thermal units, a combined move that is spreading early session weakness to literally all of the oil and gas plays.

This sector weakness (combined with Wal-Mart, as noted by Adam above) has sparked early session losses across all of the major market averages. As always, we'll keep a tight eye on the charts for any indication of how far the weakness could last.

Material Profits
A 3.3-million-barrel draw on U.S. crude stocks combined with lower imports have leveled oil price in the $60 range. And though these levels could trend slightly lower, I don't think the drop will break the consolidation range oil's been trading in for the past several weeks.

In fact, I think consolidation here will give oil prices a nice boost this winter. Tonight, we'll talk about how OPEC's production cuts will affect U.S. imports.

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