U.S. Stock Futures Tumble as the Death of American Retail Continues, Crypto Coins News

After surging more than points in New York, Dow Jones futures limped into overnight trading.
Investors grappled with negative headlines ranging from the Democrats ’Iowa caucus disaster to the closure of hundreds of Macy’s stores.
American retailers are struggling with a host of issues that go far beyond the rise of e-commerce.

Futures on the Dow and broader U.S. stock market tumbled in overnight trading Tuesday after another iconic retailer announced it would shutter hundreds of stores and layoff thousands of workers.

U.S. Stock Futures Tumble

Futures contracts for all three major U.S. indexes traded modestly lower Tuesday evening. Dow Jones futures were off by as much as points before paring losses later in the session. At press time, the Dow’s March contract was down points, or 0.1%, to ,

The Dow Jones chart (delayed) shows modest declines for the blue-chip futures contract. | Chart: Bloomberg

Futures on the S&P

(Index fell 0.2% to 3, . . Nasdaq Composite futures also tumbled 0.2% to 9, .

Macy’s Closes Hundreds of Stores

American retailer Macy’s (NYSE: M) announced Tuesday it plans to

close a fifth of its department stores and slash 24% of its corporate staff over the next three years. That amounts to (stores and roughly 2, 02 corporate workers.

Following the massive restructuring, Macy’s said it will keep running roughly of its namesake locations.

While e-commerce gets much of the blame for the decline in physical stores, there’s a lot more to the story. The aggressive over-expansion of shopping malls, rising rents, the implosion of leveraged buyouts and cash-strapped consumers have all played a role. These factors have led to a decline in both revenue and profitability, which partly explains why so many retail stocks struggled at the end of .

Since the Federal Reserve expanded monetary policy after 2012, the amount of retail debt considered risky has risen sharply. Fed policy enabled retailers to borrow lots of money at near zero interest rates, which helped to propagate an enormous retail bubble .

It’s no surprise that most large retail bankruptcies since 2020 have occurred at private equity-acquired chains. According to some estimates, private equity takeovers have killed , retail jobs since the financial crisis and over a million more could be at risk.

Combined with the meager wage growth of American workers, especially before the Trump administration took over, and we see far more structural issues that can’t be explained away by online retail.

That’s not to say e-commerce hasn’t played a role. It most certainly has. Big-box retailers have been losing shoppers to Amazon and eBay for years. The smart ones, like Walmart Stores, have invested heavily in technology to deliver a positive online shopping experience for their customers. Others like Sears and J.C. Penny failed to do so.

This article was edited by Josiah Wilmoth