The Motley Fool's Weekly Editors' Picks

Fools were out and about this week in an investing world jampacked with actions and ideas. Here are three articles you might find useful as you decide how to invest your money.

10 Dying Industries, 3 Vital Stocks
Fool contributor Alex Dumortier lets readers in on a secret: Ugly industries can produce beautiful stocks. Consider Washington Post Co., for example. Everyone knows things aren't going well for the newspaper industry, but Washington Post Co. is more than just the namesake newspaper. It derived 60% of its 2010 profits from its education segment, Alex reported.

"Once a stock is tarred with the 'terminal industry' label, investors will often dismiss it out-of-hand; thus, they are slow to pick up on changes and improvements in the business," Alex wrote.

Read the article for more of Alex's insight on how to judge stocks in ugly industries and to see why he chose AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), and Hanesbrands as beautiful stocks in ugly industries.

How Would You Fix the Health-Care System?
Investors will want to get in on the discussion of Fool contributor Morgan Housel's look at ways to address problems in the health-care system. The article starts with a bold blue-and-red chart showing that "the U.S. spends way more on health care than any other developed nation." The chart breaks down public and private spending.

Morgan then goes over five suggestions, starting with putting patients in control. The theory is that people will do a better job of bargain shopping and avoiding unnecessary procedures if they have to pay larger sums out of pocket (instead of small co-payments). Morgan offered his own insurance experiences: "With more skin in the game I became a smarter, more informed health-care consumer rather than a blind health-care recipient," Morgan wrote.

See the article to read more about fixing the health-care system; be sure to leave a comment on that page for your fellow Fools to see.

Can Wal-Mart Turn the Tide?
Fool analyst Alyce Lomax took a look inside Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) this week as the discount retail giant makes a move to bring thousands of products back to its shelves. "In its effort to cut costs, the company apparently started eliminating items customers actually wanted," Alyce wrote.

But will it be able to regain customers by restocking the shelves?

Alyce names some competitors making life hard for Wal-Mart, including discounters such as Target (NYSE: TGT) and Costco (Nasdaq: COST), dollar stores such as Dollar General (NYSE: DG) and Family Dollar, and online retailers such as Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Overstock.com.

"In this strangely precarious economic climate for the company, its shrewd effort to regain its footing may prove easier said than done, since the Bentonville Behemoth's immense scale doesn't exactly make it a nimble enterprise," Alyce wrote.

Check out the article to read all of what Alyce had to say about Wal-Mart.

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