let's bring in dana telsey at telsey advisory group. dana, talk to us about what we see in the u.s. we have seen from the earnings report so far this season. >> thank you for having me, dom. we are seeing a more cautious consumer which is hesitant in the spending. you get them to spend by offering value or innovation. like last week, it is the haves and have a-nots. you see double digit sales increases. you see walmart with a trade down from higher-income customers to them. holiday season is coming up. higher freight charges. five fewer days between thanksgiving and christmas. it will make the season in late november even more important. >> dana, how difficult is it to make some of those generalization comments about the trade down effect for consumers? i only ask because many of the dollar stores seem to have struggled despite walmart being the best performer in the dow. they are both geared to value-oriented customers. why the disconnect there? >> i think some of it is the dollar stores having the company specific issues. you see walmart execute better and capture more share and f

dana telsey. in terms of the stock, is it a bargain? >> it is. telsey advisory raised their price target on it, and it does make sense. you look at the stock, say, it's parabolic in terms of the move. it's expensive in terms of valuation, but they continue to grow into it. >> we've been worried collectively about the consumer for some time. are you feeling better now that rate cuts are fully in effect? >> it's funny, what i hear from her is not different what we've been talking about. there really is two sort of com economies and consumers right now. i think it plays out with the names she's talking about. on the valuation side, you look at a tjx, trading 28 times this year. double digit-ish earnings growth. i look at target, i say, they had such a bad period for so long, maybe they got things under control a little bit, or at least they're not executing as poorly, trading 14 1/2 times this year. that looks kind of interesting to me, especially after the quarter and guidance they put up. >>> all right, we continue to monitor the devastation in th