Macy’s Inc shares are trading lower by 2.5% to $19.25 during Thursday’s session. The stock is falling following mixed economic data and worse-than-expected first-quarter results from peer retail company Kohl’s Corp .

What Happened?

Kohl’s shares plummeted by 26.6% Thursday after the company reported worse-than-expected first-quarter FY24 earnings and revised its outlook downward.

The company’s sales for the quarter declined by 5.3% year-over-year to $3.178 billion, missing the analyst consensus estimate of $3.335 billion. Comparable sales decreased by 4.4%, although the gross margin improved by 48 basis points to 39.5%…

How To Buy Macy’s Stock

By now you're likely curious about how to participate in the market for Macy’s – be it to purchase shares, or even attempt to bet against the company.

Buying shares is typically done through a brokerage account. You can find a list of possible trading platforms here. Many will allow you to buy ‘fractional shares,' which allows you to own portions of stock without buying an entire share. For example, some stock, like Berkshire Hathaway, or Amazon.com, can cost thousands of dollars to own just one share. However, if you only want to invest a fraction of that, brokerages will allow you to do so.

In the the case of Macy’s, which is trading at $18.93 as of publishing time, $100 would buy you 5.28 shares of stock.

If you're looking to bet against a company, the process is more complex. You'll need access to an options trading platform, or a broker who will allow you to ‘go short' a share of stock by lending you the shares to sell. The process of shorting a stock can be found at this resource. Otherwise, if your broker allows you to trade options, you can either buy a put option, or sell a call option at a strike price above where shares are currently trading – either way it allows you to profit off of the share price decline.

According to data from Benzinga Pro, Macy’s has a 52-week high of $22.10 and a 52-week low of $10.54.