Trump brand takes another hit: Sears and Kmart

White House plugs Ivanka Trump's brand

Nordstrom. Neiman Marcus. TJ Maxx. And now, Sears and Kmart.

Sears Holdings, the company that owns retail stores Sears and Kmart, reportedly said this weekend that it would remove 31 Trump-branded items from its website.

The company pulled the products as part of a plan to focus on its “most profitable items,” Sears spokesman Brian Hanover told Reuters.

Hanover told the news organization that items in the Trump Home line of furnishings were removed from the company’s website, although they could still be purchased through third-party vendors online. Neither store carried the items in their physical stores, he said.

Searches of the Sears and KMart websites did not turn up Trump Home products, except for those sold by third-party vendors.

In a statement Monday, spokesman Chris Brathwaite distanced Sears from any political controversy and reiterated that many Trump-branded products are still available through third-party sellers.

“In this case, certain products were removed from our websites that included a very small number of Trump products,” he said. “The headlines do not do justice to our business or this specific brand of products that we offer through our marketplace sellers.”

Brathwaite added that the company prefers to focus on its business and “leave the politics to others.”

Related: Is Ivanka Trump’s brand losing its bling?

The move makes Sears the latest to ditch products bearing the Trump name.

Earlier this month, Nordstrom (JWN) cited brand “performance,” not politics, as the reason why it decided to stop carrying Ivanka Trump’s clothing and accessories label.

President Trump knocked the department store on Twitter in retaliation. Nordstrom stock jumped 7% in the first two days following the tweet.

Other stores have also sought to distance themselves from Ivanka Trump’s brand.

Neiman Marcus removed the brand landing page from its website, and declined to tell CNNMoney whether it intended to keep Ivanka Trump products in stores or resume online sales in the future.

TJX Companies (TJX), the company that owns TJ Maxx and Marshalls, also said that it had recently told workers not to highlight the first daughter’s brand in stores.

And retailer Belk said last week that it planned to pull Ivanka Trump’s products from its website, but would continue to offer the line in its flagship stores.

Ivanka Trump’s clothing and accessories line has taken a hit in recent months.

Online sales of her brand dipped 26% in January compared to a year earlier, according to Slice Intelligence, a retail analysis firm. Slice studied the brand’s sales on five online stores: Nordstrom, Amazon, Zappos, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s.

Online sales of Ivanka’s brand had surged in late 2015, and last month’s numbers appear to be more of a “return to reality,” according to Taylor Stanton, Slice’s marketing and communications manager. The brand’s dip in performance was abnormal in light of an uptick in 2016 online sales in the apparel and accessories category, said Jack Beckwythe, a Slice analyst.

Related: Kellyanne Conway unrepentant for Ivanka Trump plug

The Ivanka Trump brand has defended its performance.

Rosemary Young, senior director of marketing at Ivanka Trump, told CNNMoney last week that the brand was growing and experienced “significant year-over-year revenue growth in 2016.”

“We believe that the strength of a brand is measured not only by the profits it generates, but the integrity it maintains,” Young said.

Retailers like Bloomingdale’s, Amazon (AMZN), Lord & Taylor, Macy’s (M) and Zappos all still carry Ivanka Trump products.

Ivanka Trump has taken a leave of absence from her namesake company since her father won the presidency. She has no formal role in the administration but is expected to have a voice on issues such as women’s empowerment and child care.

–CNNMoney’s Jackie Wattles contributed to this story.

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 12, 2017: 3:35 PM ET

Stocks hit record again. But is Trump the reason?

What does a Trump presidency mean for the Fed?

The Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 each hit new all-time highs Monday.

Investors are giddy with excitement and they clearly believe that both big blue chip multinationals and smaller companies that do most of their business in the U.S. will continue to thrive.

So is this the Donald Trump rally? Or the Janet Yellen rally?

Some strategists believe Trump’s stimulus plans and talk of killing many burdensome regulations are the reasons stocks are soaring.

Or perhaps this is better characterized as a continuation of the Barack Obama rally instead?

You could argue that POTUS 44 has dealt POTUS 45 a pretty good hand.

The solid job market and overall economy that Trump inherited may be the reason consumers and businesses are so confident.

But investors (and financial journalists) are often quick to give the president more credit — and blame — than they probably deserve for the performance of the stock market.

RBC strategist Jonathan Golub pointed this out in a report on Monday, one that was aptly titled “Message to Market: It’s Not All About Donald.”

Related: Trump isn’t killing the bull market

Golub noted that the S&P 500 rose nearly 7% from late June through Election Day — a time when most polls were predicting that Hillary Clinton would be the next president.

But stocks have continued to rally since then, rising another 8% since Trump pulled off the upset (at least to the mainstream media and Wall Street) victory.

You can’t have it both ways. It makes no logical sense to suggest that stocks rallied because investors believed Trump would lose and that they continued to rally because Trump didn’t lose.

Bond yields have also been rising since Trump won, a phenomenon that many investors have attributed to the likelihood of stimulus from the president and Republican Congress.

Yet Golub points out that the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury was going up during the late summer as well.

Of course, many investors were expecting stimulus from Clinton too.

Yet once again, many investors are claiming that Trump is the catalyst for something that not only was going on before he was elected, but was happening because many thought he would lose.

Related: Stocks have avoided a 1% dive for an unusually long period of time

So it’s odd that Trump is being cited as the main reason for a market rally that began months before anyone felt he could win.

What’s really going on? The one constant during the past few months is the Federal Reserve.

Yes. the markets are reacting to Washington. But they are paying closer attention to Janet Yellen, not the White House.

The Fed made it crystal clear before the election that it would probably raise interest rates in December and do so a few more times in 2017 regardless of who won the race for president.

The good news for investors is that the U.S. economy seems to be growing steadily, but does not appear to be at risk of overheating.

Related: Here’s why the world’s largest money manager is worried

The most recent jobs report showed that wages grew at a decent rate of 2.5% annually. But that’s not nearly high enough to spark fears of runaway inflation and lead the Fed to aggressively raise rates.

Even if Yellen and the Fed hike rates three times this year, they are likely to do so by just a quarter point every time. That would push the Fed’s key short-term rate to a range of 1.25% to 1.5%.

That’s still extremely low. At those levels, stocks would still be more attractive than bonds. Corporate earnings should be able to keep rising at a healthy clip. And consumers would probably keep spending.

So investors would be wise to keep a close eye on Yellen and not just have a myopic focus on the president,

With that in mind, Yellen is set to testify in front of Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday. And what she says about the timing and magnitude of future rate hikes could wind up keeping the rally going full steam ahead — or stopping it dead in its tracks.

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 13, 2017: 12:30 PM ET