On today's episode of Asking for a Trend, Host Josh Lipton breaks down key stories from JCPenney's turnaround plan ahead of the holiday shopping season to the housing affordability crisis.

As the holiday shopping season quickly approaches, JCPenney CEO Marc Rosen discusses the company's turnaround plan as it announced over a year ago a $1 billion self-funded reinvestment in the business. Rosen explains that JCPenney has zeroed in on its marketing, kicking off its brand platform Make It Count and reintroducing its rewards program. He notes that the rewards program has put roughly $500,000,000 "back into the pockets of consumers." He is confident that with the program in place, JCPenney could see about twice as many customers receiving rewards than in 2023, which will ultimately drive more sales during the 2024 holiday shopping season.

Google's (GOOG, GOOGL) NotebookLM can transform document text into engaging podcasts all thanks to its most advanced AI model, Gemini 1.5. Yahoo Finance special reporter Akiko Fujita discusses the product and demonstrates how it works, referencing back to an interview with Google Labs Vice President Josh Woodward on the product's development.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage rose for the third week in a row to 6.44%. As housing affordability remains a key issue for Americans, Market Domination Host Julie Hyman analyzes a Bloomberg Economics chart showing the percentage of monthly income homebuyers are putting toward mortgage payments.

This post was written by Melanie Riehl