Sears to shut up to 120 stores, warns Ebitda to fall
By William L. Watts, MarketWatch
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — U.S. stock index futures edged lower Tuesday in quiet action after the Christmas holiday as investors awaited a closely-watched gauge of consumer confidence, while retail-chain operator Sears Holdings Corp. said it would shut up to 120 stores and warned that a key earnings measure would see a sharp fall.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJ2H -0.12% fell 21 points to 12,196. S&P 500 Index futures SP2H -0.23% fell 2.6 points to 1,257.70, while Nasdaq 100 futures ND2H -0.09% lost 1.75 points to 2,276.75.
The economic calendar features the release of the Case-Shiller home-price index for October at 9 a.m. Eastern, with the Conference Board’s December consumer-confidence index on tap at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Economists surveyed by MarketWatch forecast consumer confidence to rise to 60 from a reading of 56 in November.
“The market anticipates an improvement in consumer sentiment, and given the better labor-data statistics, that forecast could turn out to be true and may [boost] risk sentiment slightly at the start of the day,” said Boris Schlossberg, director of currency research at GFT.
The Labor Department on Thursday said the previous week’s tally of initial claims for unemployment benefits fell to 364,000 — the lowest since April 2008.
In corporate news, Sears Holdings SHLD +1.63% said it would close 100 to 120 Kmart and Sears stores and take fourth-quarter charges of $1.6 billion to $2.4 billion while reporting quarter-to-date comparable sales fell 5.2%.
The company said fourth-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization would fall by more than half from $933 million a year earlier.
London markets remained closed Tuesday, while French and German stocks pushed higher as traders returned to action after the long Christmas holiday weekend. Read Europe Markets.
Chinese stocks fell to a fresh 33-month low, dragging down Asian markets in thin trading conditions. Read Asia Markets.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA +1.02% ended Friday with a gain of 124.35 points, or 1%, at 12,294, leaving the blue chips up 3.6% for the week and 6.2% for the year.
The S&P 500 Index SPX +0.90% climbed 11.33 points to 1,265.33, leaving it up 0.6% on the year. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP +0.74% gained 19.19 points to 2,618.64, leaving it down 1.3% in the year to date.
Nymex crude-oil futures were flat in electronic trade Tuesday at $99.68 a barrel.
The euro EURUSD +0.01% rose 0.1% versus the dollar to $1.3061, while the greenback slipped 0.1% versus the Japanese currency USDJPY -0.10% to trade at 77.88 yen.
