Morgan Stanley is cutting about 1,500 jobs globally, including several managing directors, as part of a year-end efficiency push.

The cuts are skewed toward technology and operations divisions, but also include executives in sales, trading and research operations, people with knowledge of the matter said. The reductions amount to about 2% of the firm’s workforce, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The bank plans to take a charge in the range of $150 million to $200 million in its fourth-quarter results tied to the cost of the cuts, one person said.

Continue reading “Morgan Stanley Eliminates About 1,500 Jobs in Year-End Cuts” →

Like a pendulum that reached its maximum height in one direction that has begun to accelerate towards equilibrium, volumes of empty containers are shifting to the East Coast over the past few weeks.

The number of empty containers moving into the Elizabeth New Jersey market over the past two weeks has almost tripled, while inbound empties moving to the Los Angeles market has dropped 46%. Pair that with the fact outbound Los Angeles trucking volumes have dropped approximately 14% since the start of November, it seems the country’s capacity is in need of re-balancing. The question to ask is whether this is a proactive or reactive move to import behaviors by the large shipping companies and what does this mean for domestic freight.

Continue reading “Empty container movements signal freight shift to the East Coast” →

Shoppers on Thursday weren’t slowed down one bit by their huge turkey feasts.

Consumers spent a staggering $4.2 billion online on Thanksgiving, a 14.5 percent from last year and a record high, according to new figures published by Adobe Analytics on Friday. This marks the first time that Thanksgiving shopping has surpassed $4 billion.

In total, e-commerce behemoths saw a 244 percent boost in sales on Thanksgiving, while smaller retailers experienced a 61 percent jump.

Phones played a huge role in the spike in Turkey Day shopping: Overall, nearly half of the revenue — 44.9 percent — stemmed from people’s smartphones, a 24.4 increase over last year.

“Thanksgiving … has fast become a favored day by consumers for accelerating their holiday spending and shopping efforts,” Jason Woosley, vice president of commerce and platform at Adobe, said in a statement. “Don’t expect the momentum to slow down anytime soon.”

Black Friday sales are on track to hit $7.4 billion; as of 9 a.m. ET on Friday, shoppers already spent $600 million online, representing a 19.2 percent increase from last year.

The full holiday season — which is six days shorter than is typical, because Thanksgiving fell on the fourth Thursday in November, the last possible date it could be — is expected to bring in $143.7 billion in online spending. That’s a 14.1 percent increase compared to 2018.

Boscov’s, the largest family-owned department store chain in America, saw “very healthy” sales increases on Thursday evening and Friday, CEO Jim Boscov told FOX Business.

The company, which has more than four-dozen stores across the mid-Atlantic, has worked hard to shield shoppers from rising costs, a result of the billions of dollars stemming from the U.S.-China trade war.

“So much of the year’s business is done in these few weeks” that it’s important to limit price increases in the period as much as possible, Boscov said. Some of the levies could be avoided by placing orders before they took effect, he said, and suppliers sometimes absorbed the impact if their profit margin was sufficient.

CONTINUE @ FOX