US futures rise with Powell on deck again

The Amazon (AMZN) bra-buying trade.

Victoria’s Secret (VSCO) truly had a disastrous earnings day last night, not unlike what happened at fellow mall dweller Foot Locker (FL) just a few hours earlier. Shares of the intimate apparel player are crashing almost 30% in the pre-market, and it’s the right move.

Management cited no improvement in sales trends in February from the fourth quarter’s 6% decline.

JP Morgan analyst Matt Boss — who downgraded VSCO today — added the below section into his research note to clients that caught my attention. It appears VSCO is losing further market share to Amazon, a battle the company is unlikely to win. The problem is structural, in my view.

“Worth noting on the intimates industry data, management cited the Sports Bra category outpacing Non-Sport (i.e. Structured Bras), with the broader Intimates total addressable market split 30% Sports Bras vs. 70% Non-Sport (relative to VSCO over-indexing to Non-Sport bras currently). To that end, management noted the overall intimates market down mid-single-digits in 4Q reflected a shift towards Value/Amazon as a result of a challenged consumer, in addition to sportswear players such as Lululemon (LULU) taking share in the Sports Bra category.”

Despite the terrible quarters from VSCO/FL, there are retailers in the mall that are winning.

Take a look below at what Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) CEO Fran Horowitz told me after another quarter of double-digit sales gains on Wednesday.