CAPS investors aren't remotely negative about this stock.

NOTE TO EDITORS: The Following Is an Investment Opinion Being Issued by Analyst Choice

Analyst Alton Stump of Longbow Research initiates coverage of Whole Foods Markets Inc (NASDAQ: WFMI) with a “buy” rating. The target price for WFMI is set to $35.

WFMI’s identical-sales have recovered significantly over the last two quarters. Longbow Research believes that SFMI would be able to regain lost customers, since the quality of its products is much better than that of its grocery-store competitors.

Whole Foods Markets is poised to benefit from the anticipated improvement in stabilization and recovery opportunities in the domestic grocery industry in 2010, Longbow Research says. WFMI was able to enjoy higher traffic and basket size than its competitors, despite lesser discount activities. The company’s stock is attractively valued at present, the analyst adds.

Whole Foods Market (NasdaqNM: WFMI) opened at $26.14. So far today, the stock has hit a low of $25.92 and a high of $26.41. WFMI is now trading at $25.99, down $0.01 (-0....(Click the story link or go to http://www.marketintelligencecenter.com for the full story)

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Calavo's joining a popular small-cap index prompts a closer look.

He is outspoken. He ruffles feathers. He barely collects a paycheck. John Mackey, chief executive of Whole Foods Market, is clearly not interested in fitting the CEO mold. For these reasons and more, Mackey has been named a finalist for the 2009 MarketWatch CEO of the Year award.

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See the rest of the story here.

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Past data is useful, but any future price appreciation in the stock will be the result of what lies ahead.

Value Expectations submits:

Using The Applied Finance Group's (AFG's) Value Expectations interface we have provided an analysis of the expectations embedded in the stock prices of some of the top performers in the S&P 500 year to date (excluding financials) to see which companies have the lowest expectations for sales growth (VE Sales Growth) relative to what the company has been able to deliver historically (5 Year Median Sales Growth).

AFG’s Value Expectations interface provides clients a platform to better understand economic profitability, and at the same time understand the performance a company must deliver to justify its current stock price. By understanding the embedded expectations a company must deliver to justify their current trading price, clients can develop a “hurdle rate” to quickly determine if the company’s expectations are rich or low. Take, for example, the typical company during the tech bubble: the expectations that were priced into the average tech stock far exceeded what it could realistically deliver. For this reason, AFG identified the technology sector as overvalued, as well as potential torpedoes such as Cisco (CSCO), whose expectations were unrealistically high.

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Stocks for a tightwad consumer portfolio.

Zachary Scheidt submits:

Black Friday is coming – that dreaded day when consumers look for bargains, and retailers stay open from dawn (or pre-dawn) to dusk in a day that could make or break sales goals for the entire year. Investors are shopping for bargains as well, and many are looking for quality stocks on sale. The problem with buying something at a cheap price, is that unless you are careful, you could end up buying poor quality goods.

Whole Foods Market Inc. (WFMI) appears to be one of those “on sale” retail stocks. Investors can pick up shares for a 22% discount to the high posted in October, and if you look back to the stock’s all-time-high in 2006, investors are now able to buy at a 65% discount. Since the company sells high quality organic groceries at relatively wide profit margins, it is easy to understand why investors would be willing to pay a premium for the shares. But at the end of the day, Whole Foods is still simply a grocery store, and one with relatively stagnant growth at that.

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