If you’ve steered clear of Macy’s messy racks and labyrinthine layout lately, you’re in for a surprise: The department store just posted better-than-expected Q1 results and raised its full-year guidance.

Comparable store sales grew 3%, the best first quarter in four years, and the company now expects 2026 revenue to reach $21.5 billion to $21.75 billion, beating expectations. Credit the turnaround to Macy’s “Reimagined” initiative, a makeover of 200 stores with elevated design and locally curated merchandise. Sister chain Bloomingdale’s did even better, with comparable sales up 10.2%—delivering its highest Q1 sales volume on record—thanks to clever collaborations with buzzy brands like Khaite and Cult Gaia. (Rival Saks’s bankruptcy didn’t hurt either.)

Sleepy department stores aren’t the only corner of retail waking up. Walmart—which has sat at the top of the Fortune 500 for 13 years—was just dethroned by Amazon. The online giant’s revenue in 2025 grew 12% year over year to $717 billion, narrowly pulling ahead of Walmart’s $713 billion, earning it the top spot.

Walmart should also be worried about arch nemesis Target, which reported a 5.6% jump in comparable store sales in Q1, three times what analysts were anticipating. The bullseye also raised its full-year guidance, buoyed by bumper sales of its mystery boxes, new beverages like mushroom coffee, and Q2 plans to unveil department-style beauty studios in 600 stores.

On the losing end of the mall, Gap missed its Q1 revenue expectations, blaming its own clothes (specifically its Old Navy dresses). And shares in American Eagle slid after comparable sales for the company’s flagship brand slid 2%—Sydney Sweeney ad campaign and all.

What it takes to survive in retail today

What Macy’s, Target, and Amazon have in common: None are peddling the same mom jeans and jorts they were a few years ago. Macy’s and Target are clawing out of the dead-mall grave by overhauling their stores, while Amazon outgrew its online book purveyor roots long ago, and has since sprawled into every corner of consumer life.

The lesson Amazon just taught Walmart: Even a 13-year reign as number one isn’t safe when faster-evolving rivals are rising up the ranks.

But reinvention only goes so far when it’s up against the economy. Rising prices have pushed consumer sentiment to a new record low, which helps explain why Dollar General and Dollar Tree are doing just fine. For everyone else, getting shoppers to open their wallets when they feel broke is going to take more than a sales rack. –JD

🟢 What’s up

• Intel gained 4.47%, snapping a five-day losing streak as investors reassessed concerns around AI PCs and competition from Nvidia.
• GameStop jumped 6.07% after reporting revenue growth and approving a $2 billion share buyback program.
• Medtronic rose 5.69% after delivering its strongest annual revenue growth in a decade.
• KFC-Taco Bell owner Yum! Brands climbed 1.29% after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock, citing underestimated growth prospects.
• Navitas Semiconductor surged 19.26% as its latest power chip technology was showcased by Nvidia at Computex.

What’s down

• Palo Alto Networks fell 5.64% despite reporting strong earnings, weighing on cybersecurity peers Zscaler, CrowdStrike, and Okta, which dropped 6.78%, 2.78%, and 7.89%, respectively.
• GitLab dropped 2.8% after announcing plans to cut 14% of its workforce.
• Quantum computing stocks Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum, and IonQ fell 10.36%, 8.02%, and 4.44%, respectively, as investors took profits following the sector’s recent rally.
• Ulta Beauty slipped 4.78% despite beating earnings expectations and issuing strong guidance.
• Shake Shack declined 2.6% after analyst downgrades highlighted repeated guidance cuts, rising inflation pressures, and margin concerns.
• Intuitive Machines tumbled 14.51% after announcing plans to raise $500 million through a stock offering.

Like that annoying ‘software update’ that keeps popping up, private credit’s redemption woes are back in the spotlight.

Yesterday, Cliffwater’s flagship private credit fund revealed it capped second-quarter redemptions at 5% after investors requested withdrawals equal to 17% of assets, meaning investors will receive only about one-third of the money they asked for.

That’s not great. But the worse news is that those concerns are spreading beyond private credit: Today, Swiss asset manager Partners Group capped withdrawals from its $8.6 billion private equity fund at 5% after investors sought to redeem 9.8% of assets. Shares fell 16.33%, dragging down alternative asset managers across the board, with Blackstone, KKR, Ares Management, and Blue Owl each losing about 4%.

To note: Caps aren’t always a sign of trouble. Because private-market funds invest in illiquid assets, many limit withdrawals to protect long-term investors and avoid selling at unfavorable prices. Partners Group’s CEO pinned things on nervous retail clients, not fund performance, and said institutions still hold roughly 80% of assets—suggesting that sentiment is to blame rather than a broken portfolio.

So before criticizing these firms for not following Blackstone’s lead and having executives personally invest a collective $150 million into the fund, it’s worth remembering what the gates are for: to keep short-term exits from turning into long-term damage.—SY

The stock market may be flying past red flags and hitting new peaks regularly, but investors aren’t letting bitcoin off the hook so easily.

The blue-chip cryptocurrency is down 25.35% year to date, as geopolitical chaos and higher-for-longer interest rates have spooked investors. Bitcoin’s performance has been so rough that it’s lagging stocks by the largest margin since 2019.

Bitcoin is out of vogue: Part of the problem is that retail investors, who were once starstruck by the volatile digital asset, have moved on, preferring to send shares of AI stocks to the moon. Just look at ETFs tracking bitcoin, which have lost about $3.4 billion since May, according to Bloomberg.

On top of that, institutional investors are instead looking towards the next big thing in crypto—tokenization—according to the Wall Street Journal. Even the biggest bitcoin bulls are getting spooked: Michael Saylor’s Strategy just sold 32 tokens last week for the first time since 2022’s crypto winter. Striking, given Strategy’s entire business model revolved around becoming a stock play on bitcoin by guzzling tokens at a rabid clip.

Alternative-alternative assets

Investors aren’t ditching digital assets altogether, though. They’re getting hype (literally) about an under-the-radar corner of the crypto market. The HYPE token, which is connected to crypto exchange Hyperliquid, has soared about 188.1% this year, a staggering rally compared to the performance of other digital assets. HYPE reached an all-time high on Monday, and funds tracking the token have gathered $180 million in assets within the first three weeks of launching, according to Bloomberg.

Why all the hype for HYPE? Unlike bitcoin, which mostly trades on vibes, HYPE is tied to a lucrative exchange, and each trade generates a fee. The exchange then funnels a majority of those fees right back into buying even more HYPE on the open market. The catch: Unlike a stock, HYPE holders don’t own any piece of Hyperliquid.

Still, it looks like the fervor for digital gold is morphing into excitement for something resembling a normal business model.—LB

• Payroll processor ADP reported today that US private employers added 122,000 jobs in May. That’s the most since January 2025 and more than what economists had forecast.
• Meta announced a new Business Agent in an effort to reach more enterprise customers and diversify away from ad revenue.
• Vanguard’s VOO ETF became the first ETF to reach $1 trillion in assets, overtaking State Street’s SPY.
• Just how behind is the US on building datacenters? Very behind.
• Just a few months after the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s tariff agenda in February, the White House is now proposing broad tariffs on 60 countries using a new legal strategy.

Earnings announcements: Ciena, Lululemon Athletica, Docusign, and Brown-Forman keep the earnings train on the tracks.

Economic reports: Labor markets remain the topic of the week with the usual initial jobless claims report, plus we’ll get a look at US productivity in Q1.