Though the shelves at your local Target Corporation (ticker: TGT) and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT) may be stocked well, you still won’t find any stock on those shelves — not the kind that makes investors wealthy, anyway.

Certainly, both companies have far transcended their humble beginnings — Target in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, and Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas. Yet today, they also stand at a challenging crossroads in a competitive digital age.

This year, Target shares are off roughly 8 percent. But as recently as May, the stock was on a tear, up 12 percent from January through April. Then came May’s second quarter earnings report, and investors punished Target after it aimed for the bull’s-eye but instead hit the bear’s behind.

While earnings rose 16.5 percent, sales missed forecasts and guidance from the company was glum. Between May 10 and 18, Target stock plunged more than 16 percent; it currently trades close to $69 per share.

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Wal-Mart, on the other hand, has enjoyed a steady climb this year, so gradual and sublime you couldn’t be blamed if you missed it. The stock, now trading at $72, is up more than 17 percent in 2016.

Wal-Mart has few if any threats so far as copycats to its brick-and-mortar model, though its Sam’s Club has a very close competitor in by Costco Wholesale Corp. ( COST). Yet like Target, Wal-Mart faces stiff headwinds from other corners of the retail sphere. Thus, there’s a strange apples-to-oranges parity between the two, and you don’t have to hit the produce section to spot it.

“While Target struggles to maintain a more than 6 percent lead over Wal-Mart in profit margin, Wal-Mart struggles to stay above the water from the inescapable e-commerce threat from Amazon.com (AMZN),” says K.C. Ma, director of the George Investments Institute at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida.

Indeed, Amazon continues to dominate all things e-commerce, and passed Wal-Mart in July of last year as the world’s largest retailer. But that’s not to say Wal-Mart has given up on the digital front — in fact, far from it.

Wal-Mart hopes to grow its online sales around 20 to 30 percent in the near term by leveraging its tremendous distribution platform to support digital sales growth. Still, the explosion of e-commerce sets up a curious scenario where Wal-Mart and Target could face unlikely competitors: themselves.

If nothing else, sales growth numbers may shed some light on where the companies stand. Figures provided by the investment analytics and financial research firm FactSet show sales growth hasn’t been the best of stories for either Wal-Mart or Target.

Since January 2013, Target has seen its growth decline from 4.9 percent to 1.6 percent in January of this year. Over the same period, Wal-Mart fell from 5.7 percent to -0.7 percent. Looking ahead, it’s not much better: FactSet numbers project that by January 2017, Wal-Mart will inch up to 1 percent sales growth — while Target will slide 5.6 percent.

“By investing $2 billion in labor, health care and employee training for next two years, the benefit is immediate: Wal-Mart shareholders have been rewarded 5 percent for last six months,” Ma says. Target, citing improvements “not recognized by the market,” has seen its strategic shift met with returns of -4 percent.

But at least on the social media front — a metric that holds one key to retail success — Target clearly holds the lead. NetBase’s “Social Media Industry Report 2016: Retail Brands,” examined the overall performance of 60 leading retail brands across social channels. On the one hand, the social analytics company found Target and Wal-Mart close in terms of social outreach.

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“Target was second in mentions and Wal-Mart fourth,” says Paige Leidig, CMO at NetBase. “Target’s reach, mentions and awareness ranks were all comparable. But Target’s brand passion index ranking was 41st while Wal-Mart’s was 51st, suggesting that Target conversation was both more positive and more passionate.”

No. 1 on the mentions rank? Amazon. Tiffany and Co. (TIF) scored tops in the brand passion category. But if there were such thing as the broker passion index, the luxury jeweler would hold all the appeal of cubic zirconia: TIF stock is off almost 4 percent for the year.

Meanwhile, the rise of dollar stores proves that some outlets can out-bargain a Wal-Mart or Target bargain. Wall Street types are definitely noticing: Dollar General Corp. (DG) in particular was high octane, up 26 percent this year until August. A disappointing earnings report tripped up DG stock, but nine out of 20 analysts still rate it a “strong buy.”

What’s more, TGT and WMT stand apart from their retail peers for dubious reasons. Both have been dogged in recent years by bad publicity and a costly aftermath. Target’s big data breach of 2013 whacked 40 million customers, and almost singlehandedly accelerated the adoption of EMV chip-based credit cards in the U.S. (Yes, Target takes them.) All told, the breach cost Target $252 million.

Yet that’s chump change compared to the setbacks Wal-Mart weathered after getting drubbed for its draconian labor practices. In response, the company enacted reforms that began last year and will increase wages by a total of $2.7 billion. And while that has made the worker bees happier, market watchers consider it quite the buzzkill.

After the breach, Target made a smart move to right the ship. New CEO Brian Cornell, who came on board in August 2014, closed Target’s underperforming Canadian operation and focused on transparency with the U.S. customer base.

Cornell has also heralded a shift to a more focused consumer strategy and it’s working, Ma says: “While Wal-Mart has been struggled to find the sweet spot to match the right prices and quality of products to carry, Target has returned to smaller, healthier, high-end stores with higher profit margins.

So which mega retailer holds the advantage in the end? In the spirit of the political season, Ma makes his forecast:

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“Forward-looking valuation models suggest that WMT has a fair value around $80, approximately 9 percent undervalued. TGT has a fair value of $74 with 7 percent undervaluation,” he says. “So if the election happened today, Wal-Mart would win.”

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Stock Market Showdown: Target Corporation (TGT) vs. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT) originally appeared on usnews.com