It was an unexpected turn of events that Walmart (NYSE: WMT) was able to turn in a surprisingly robust quarterly earnings report, but Target (NYSE: TGT) was unable to match the effort. Its own earnings fell woefully short of forecasts.

The retailers are often viewed as somewhat similar given that they are both discount mass-merchandise retailers. But one skews toward deeper discounting and the other to mid-tier retailing, and so their divergent results raised a few eyebrows.

Yet in a period featuring persistently high inflation, a stagnating economy, and fears of a full-blown recession, maybe the outcomes were a foregone conclusion after all.

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Source Fool.com