Selection of Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary Raises Stocks: Live Trade Updates

Retailers are succumbing to the dominance of e-commerce and struggling to save increasingly irrelevant physical shopping spaces by turning them into fulfillment centers for processing orders and returns online, rather than stores where customers can browse and shop.

The forces driving online shopping were in place long before the pandemic. But going forward, 2020 will be seen as a major turning point for retail, report Michael Corkery and Sapna Maheshwari of The New York Times:

• Across the industry, online sales are expected to grow at their fastest pace in 12 years, accounting for 20 percent of all retail purchases this year. That’s a 16 percent increase in 2019, according to Forrester Research.

• Earlier this month, the number of stores announced for closure in 2020 rose to a high of 10,991, according to CoStar Group, a data provider for the real estate industry. Many malls are tottering as tenants reduce the number of stores, do not pay rent or go bankrupt.

• Across Manhattan, the number of signed or renewed retail leases fell 31 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier and rents fell 13 percent in major commercial corridors, according to CBRE, a real estate services company.

• But warehouse leases were up 70 percent in the third quarter from the previous quarter, and more than a dozen e-commerce warehouses are being built to meet New York’s insatiable need for same-day delivery.

• In June, Amazon signed a lease for a 285,000-square-foot “delivery station” in the Maspeth section of Queens. Amazon has also vastly expanded the space it rents in a number of giant warehouses on Staten Island. In addition to the 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center the company opened in 2018, Amazon this fall expanded to an additional 1.4 million square feet of space at the Staten Island site. In the Bronx, the company is taking over a building recently vacated by rival Walmart.

As Inauguration Day approaches, President Trump’s grip on the collective psyche of investors appears to be waning.

Investors of all political persuasions say they are willing to turn the page in what was a profitable but extraordinarily politicized and stressful period for financial markets, where they had to contend with an unpredictable force whose pronouncements frequently moved stock prices. Matt from The New York Times. Phillips reports.

The president’s proclamation of market records, intimidation by the executive whose decisions he disagreed with, and surprise policy announcements via Twitter contrasted with the behavior of previous presidents.

Since taking office, he has tweeted or retweeted the stock market more than 200 times and made dozens of statements highlighting the growth of the market under his management.

Trump has revealed market-moving information after private discussions with executives, has demanded that the Fed cut interest rates to prop up the market, and revealed his shifting positions in the trade war with China in a barrage of unexpected tweets that brought down stock prices.

He has publicly threatened and criticized major US companies, clashing with Amazon.com over their tax payments and settlements with the US Postal Service; with General Motors, Ford and Carrier – then a subsidiary of United Technologies – about plans to close plants; and with Lockheed Martin and Boeing on the costs of Air Force One fighter jets and replacements.

For some investors, it means that @realDonaldTrump has become an unwanted distraction that they hope they can ignore soon.

“I just want my life to get back to normal,” said Barry Ritholtz, a money manager in New York who did not vote for Trump. “I just want the noise level to go down.”