JCPenney’s Turnaround, Housing Affordability: In Search of a Trend

On today’s episode of Asking for a Trend, host Josh Lipton breaks down the biggest stories from JCPenney’s pre-holiday turnaround plan to the housing affordability crisis.

As the holiday shopping season approaches, JCPenney CEO Marc Rosen talks about the company’s turnaround plan, which announced a self-funded $1 billion reinvestment in the company over a year ago. Rosen explains that JCPenney has focused on its marketing, launching its Make It Count brand platform and reintroducing its rewards program. He notes that the rewards program has put approximately $500,000,000 “back into consumers’ pockets.” He is confident that with the program in place, JCPenney could receive rewards to about twice as many customers as it did in 2023, ultimately leading to more sales during the 2024 holiday shopping season.

Google’s (GOOG, GOOGL) NotebookLM can turn document text into engaging podcasts thanks to its most advanced AI model, Gemini 1.5. Yahoo Finance special reporter Akiko Fujita discusses the product and demonstrates how it works, referencing an interview with Josh Woodward, vice president of Google Labs, about the product’s development.

The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose for the third week in a row to 6.44%. As housing affordability continues to be a top issue for Americans, Market Domination host Julie Hyman analyzes a chart from Bloomberg Economics that shows what percentage of monthly income homebuyers are putting toward mortgage payments.

This article was written by Melanie Riehl