Shares of nordstrom down about 15 in the premarket, penne yerkss taking a hit. Well break down whats really happening in the sector. Donald trump launching another attack on amazon and jeff bezos. Trump saying when it comes to taxes, amazon is, quote, getting away with murder. Apple ceo tim cook told cnbc hes very optimistic about china and putting his money where his mouth is in a big way. Well look at the Chinese Company apple just invested 1 billion in. But first up, Government Data shows retail sales up 1. 3, surge led by autos, gasoline and Online Retail. But theres more Department Store pain on the earnings front. Both penney and nordstrom tumbling. At least eight firms cutting their price targets on nordstrom, which misses by a large margin 26 versus 45. Revenue was light. Comps down 1. 7, but the lesson here is that even retailers of that income demographic are not immune. Everybody at the mall was out of position, no way to put it otherwise. If you think of the three drivers of what matters to retail at any time its the kind of secular move toward online and everything else. Different ways of buying. Cyclical are Consumer Spending and then the weather. I think all three of those things went against you to some degree in april. But i think the government retail sales here its not a macro issue most directly, in fact within that report its nonstore sales that were the strongest. Nonstore retail up 10. 2 year on year. There it is. And its something weve been talking about now for years, actually, this movement for your phone to get your business done, willingness of stay home or do something else, take a walk in the park instead of in the mall while youre buying things. This is a trend were going to continue to see, im sure. And weve all talked about how the mall is suffering, or at least those retailers. This week we may look back on it as sort of a week where everybody started to wonder about the real future of mall base retail particularly as apparel, but at the same time these companies are still making money. Macys still has a dividend, a 5 yield at this point. You do have to wonder at what point the stocks will start to find some support, maybe even jc penney today around the dollar level despite what was not a great number. Jcp comps up 0. 4, looks good given the environment, but citi points out a model doesnt do well with negative comps and this is a little too close to that. Exactly right. Theyre not growing the store base. Yes, they have some cash flow. They have real estate. I mean, if thats going to be a fallback or not, maybe its a liability. But i do think whats interesting the xrts, the etf and srp index down 15 this week. Wow. So on a friday if you dont get some kind of short or reversal, the main thing to me nordstrom yesterday after the close and jc penney this morning, both stocks weak going into the reports and adding to the losses. So maybe theres some kind of a final crescendo of selling thats going to happen. They reiterated their 1 billion ebitda this year at jc penney. They stuck with their Comp Store Sales target as well despite what was a number below what theyre hoping for 3 to 4 for the full year. Even margins 36. 2 versus 36. 4. A lot of people if youd asked them last week they said well take it. This is where i think the street is saying, well, what do we have to actually look forward as a catalyst before holiday time, right . So you have this long summer stretch where its give me a fundamental reason why these things are going to move. Ultimately maybe the stocks have to get cheap enough so they can lift. I tweeted this morning remember when everybody laughed at urban for buying a pizza chain . Now it doesnt look so crazy. Theyre going to have to start thinking outside the sbarro box. Is that obvious by now . Or outside the pizza box. Whatever you have to do. And the world is telling these guys experiences matter, people want to spend time somewhere but not necessarily want to buy a pair of jeans. These companies and businesses can still generate a decent amount of cash, but theyll have to continue to take costs out. In the case of jc penney for example it appears they are taking significant cost cutting to try and maintain even those fairly skimpy margins theyre talking about. One would have to imagine thats going to be sort of a role for many of these retailers. And dillards no exception. 2. 17 misses by 35 cents. Comps down 5 double the loss expected. Tiffany, the cfo resigning may 20th. Going to a different company. So there really havent been too many exceptions this time around. Not many bright spots. I think to davids point the one place where the newspaper analogy breaks down, people say, wow, this is what happened to newspapers, people giving up newspapers to get something for free. They werent going elsewhere to pay for something. Thats the way i look at it. Theyre buying differently. Nobodys offering Free Clothing out there thats going to compete with the people trying to charge for clothing. Thats true. Maybe thats a very small comfort, but its a difference. They offer the ability to get it to your door now in less than 24 hours. Thats true. And send it back if it doesnt even fit. Amazon, although a different type of story today. Everything about amazon. Donald trump once again taking aim at amazon and jeff bezos in a big new way. Heres what he said last night on fncs hannity program. This is owned as a toy by jeff bezos who controls amazon. Amazon is getting away with murder tax wise. Hes using the Washington Post for power so that the politicians in washington dont tax amazon like they should be taxed. Hes getting absolutely away. Hes worried about me. And i think he said that to somebody, was in some article where he thinks i would go after him for antitrust because hes got a huge antitrust problem. Because hes controlling so much. Amazon is controlling so much of what theyre doing. And what theyve done is he bought this paper for practically nothing, and hes using that as a tool for political power against me and against other people. And ill tell you what, we cant let him get away with it. Wow. Now, bezos has gone after trumps gone after bezos before on the tax front. And certainly on the Washington Post cover front. The antitrust wrinkle is an evolution in his thinking. It is. Its new. I guess given the week weve had and the news weve been talking about in terms of amazon eating everybodys lunch you might expect it to enter the conversation. But curious to see the antitrust case against amazon what exactly theyd focus on. What do you define as the market . And how do you go about defining their dominance of the market . Its extraordinary to hear a presumptive nominee, the Republican Party tap one man and one company in particular in that way. And, guys, maybe you know better than i, but the state tax story seemed to have passed on amazon, right . Thats sort of an old story where theyre not paying sales tax. They are now. On a state basis. Yes. Where they tend to have infrastructure in place. Which is a lot of states now. Yes. Its just amazing to me that a billionaire who wont show you his tax returns still manages to find even richer people and more powerful institutions to put himself in opposition against on taxes, on somebody whos, you know, wielding their power in a way that he thinks is unfair. Its amazing. And of course his reference to the Washington Post i think bezos for 250 million or 350 million a number of years ago. Im not sure he ever thought it would bring him heat on the real part of his business, which of course is amazon. Fascinating to listen to mr. Trump make that attack. Very much unclear to me though exactly what it would actually mean in terms of the real world taxes wise, whether its sales tax or corporate tax. Its unclear to me. Wow. Lets bring in our chief washington correspondent john harwo harwood. John, im making a list of companies in his crosshairs, utx, starbucks, macys, is there Something Different about this attack on bezos and amazon . One thing different is the story the Washington Post has this morning about donald trump and his past penchant for posing as a publicist to generate stories about himself. Now, he came on the today show this morning, denied that he had done that. But this is something that the post had contemporaneous witnesses on and sounds an awful lot like donald trump. And donald trump is somebody who has shown a willingness to go very hard after his critics. And he knew that story was coming. He talked to hannity about, you know, the inquiries he was getting from post reporters and post assigning a team of people to go after him. Hes trying to protect himself against the effect of those stories. Bezos of course back in december responded via twitter saying that maybe they could send trump to space in his words through his blue origin company. Where does the rhetoric lead, john . We got 180 more days of this. Look, weve seen in this primary Campaign Donald trump is a politician of the kind that we have not seen before. He says things that other people wont say. He is inflammatory and direct in a way that past president ial nominees have not been willing to be. I would expect that donald trump there arent any guardrails on him as a politician. You see the things that he has been saying about Hillary Clinton and bill clinton. Were going to hear more of that. And i think as he gets targeted or criticized by institutions, by individuals, you can expect him to go hard after them. Remember the Ricketts Family with a stop trump Political Action committee, said better watch out hes got business interests and vulnerabilities stuff theyre hiding. In the end governor of nebraska is a member of the family, he came out the other day and endorsed donald trump as the republican nominee. So some of these things are going to shift. But Donald Trumps going to go after anybody who goes after him. John, were going to come back to you later on, im sure after a busy day yesterday in washington. John harwood in washington, d. C. Meanwhile, apple investing 1 billion in the chinese Ride Sharing Service didi chuxing. Lets bring in analyst from piper jaffry. Gene, good morning to you. Good morning. Is this a precursor to a car . Is it a way to build good will with the chinese . What do you make of it . Well, i mean, you jumped to probably the real story here is that theres probably something bigger going on. You take a step back and look at this, it purely face value, 1 billion investment on 160 billion in cash, its just a sign that theyre starting to edge outside of their core market, which is great. But then theres the bigger story which youre talking about and that is apple starting to inch into the autonomous car. And chinas done a lot around that. I think most investors dont know that baido, which is the google in china, has their own initiative. They have cars driving around the bay area and they want to have a global sales driving car business. So the idea of china being a frontrunner in that, i think, is very apparent. And i think apple is starting to plant some of the seeds for that potential, which is kind of consistent with a lot of people and our belief that apple is going to eventually have some form of a car. Gene, you know, you put this investment in context of 160 billion in net cash apple has so therefore no big deal might as well experiment in a fast growing area perhaps. But what about the response even such a small investment like this reminds me of the beats deal, 3 billion, really not a big strategic move and yet everybody criticizes or thinks apple is moving away or going away from its core. Does that constrain or steer apple, the fact that everything is so scrutinized . I think it probably doesnt because theyve been pretty slow. I mean, they talk about all the acquisitions, most of them are very small. To your point this investment is a pretty big deal from apples perspective. They spent about 3 billion for beats. This is 1 billion. This would be their second largest in some ways form of an acquisition. And so i think that that part is important and will get scrutinized because its just a little bit bigger. One of the Critical Issues that apple has in terms of their stock is this idea that its not a growth company. And the idea that theyre not getting into fast growing markets. So i think a small investment in their context 1 billion can help persuade investors that they are thinking of other things. Gene, you know, the journal just states as fact they have 1,000 people working on autonomous people. They dont even source it anymore. I guess its widely known. Is that your understanding . Do you have any census in terms of how much the resources the company is devoting to the effort . Well, one of the reporters for the wall street journal has probably done the best work on titan, so im going to defer to him on that kind of 1,000 people. Theres been talk about some people leaving titan, and thats true. There have been some people coming and going, but the net number of people has gone up. A year ago that number was about 600. So theyve almost doubled the number of people working on that. Ive been learned some hard lessons over the past few years to understand because apple is working on something may not see the light of day, but this is a pretty big internal initiative for apple. Yeah. We love to needle you sometimes, gene, about tv. But, i mean, if youre going to go here on a car, how long of a wait, how vertical will it be . Do you have any guesses on that . Well, i can say what the industry has said, we also talk to consultants that work with these companies about this. Most of them say that a working pro prototype is probably around 2020, which probably means 2021 or 22 is when you could actually purchase one. Thats a long wait for some. Were going to talk about it until then though. Gene, good to see you. Happy friday. Gene munster joining us at piper jaffry. Thank you. When we come back, more on todays movers plus a board battle david will talk about. The premarket does imply a fourth week down for the nasdaq. Thank you, apple. And three weeks down for the dow and s p. Dont go away. In a world held back by compromise, businesses need the agility to do one thing another. Only at t has the network, people, and partners to help companies be. Local global. Open secure. Because no one knows like at t. Welcome back. An update now on french drug giant pursuit of the Oncology Company medivation. Sources close to the situation tell me that sanofi is going to nominate eight directors, the entire slate actually, to replace the current board at medivation. This because of the ability to act by written consent to replace the entire board of directors at medivation. Sources say as soon as next week the names will be filed, slate will be out for sanofi to move forward when the company made its offer public after not really getting a sufficient audience, medivation has since rejected that proposal as substantially inadequate. On a Conference Call last week in terms of earnings the company also saying were all about value and we and our board believe we can deliver significantly more value by executing on our Strategic Plan versus the sanofi proposal. But sanofi now moving ahead with what we expected would be the case namely naming eight new directors that it wants to place on medivations board by written consent of its shareholders which then would have the effect of saying were going to actually accept your bid, or if they were to win the company would simply it would be a sign the Company Needs to negotiate. Perhaps more importantly some speculation earlier this week and late last week about Goldman Sachs. Goldman sachs became restricted in the name. That led to some speculation that perhaps it was being hired as an advisor by a particular Company Interested in participating in an auction to buy medivation. I can tell you sanofi has been the company that hired Goldman Sachs. Goldman an advisor joining Morgan Stanley as it continues to try to acquire that company. And so goldman, which has typically advised the likes of a pfizer or an amgen, they participated a couple years ago when they were facing potential activism, goldman is now on the sanofi team. Sometimes companies will go out and try to lock up other bankers they think might take part in a potential rival and simply by virtue of doing that sanofi can perhaps send a sign to anybody considering a bid that were very serious here. Doesnt necessarily wont mean there wont be potential other bids for the company. And at this point weve heard nothing from medivation indicating willingness to put itself up by sale. But acting by written consent as sanofi is going to do it limits the choices for the company, which right now is simply arguing its fundamental value, michael and carl, is above or will be above what sanofi is offering. It traded they keep talking about 52week high at the very least when they talk about value. Something oftentimes company say and many people speculating believe sanofi would have to pay a 52week high because psychologically that stays in there. Just when the drama at yahoo goes down we get drama some place else. We do. When we come back, cashins take on the market this friday 13th. And the fed as we count down the opening bell. More squawk on the street from the nyse in a minute. Every year, the amount of data your enterprise uses goes up. Smart devices are up. Cloud is up. Analytics is up. Seems like everything is up except your budget. Introducing comcast Business Enterprise solutions. With a different kind of network that delivers the bandwidth you need without the high cost. Because you cant build the business of tomorrow on the network of yesterday. Incredible bladder prthat lets from always discreeyou move like you mean it now comes with an incredible promise. The always discreet double your money back guarantee. Always discreet is for bladder leaks and its drier than poise. Try it. Were so confident youll love it, well give you double your money back if you dont. Incredible bladder protection. Double your money back guarantee. Thats always discreet. Hows it going watson . Welcome to the bank. Hello tom mcc