Folks, we've got a very sensitive video for you today and it may not be up for long around the U.S store after store in city after city is closing down and sadly this is getting very, very little if any coverage. This is a growing economic issue and it's not the FED. It's not inflation, it's not Putin It's sadly crime. Business After Business is reporting that they are closing due to crime and because this is such a controversial issue, a lot of the financial media Outlets won't report on it and if they do, they report on it in a way that's just not that trustworthy or truthful.

And in today's video I want to give you this issue straight from a business and Econ standpoint. No hidden agenda, just talking to you straight facts. You could share your thoughts down below if you want after watching this video, but this is going to be a presentation that I think is going to open your eyes pretty wide to a very aggressive economic issue that a lot of companies are unfortunately facing right now and quick plug before we get into it. Our next top trade idea is coming out tomorrow right at Market Open.

So if you want to make sure that you're one of the first find out about it, make sure to sign up for our email and SMS alerts with that first link down below and also make sure to put on that notification Bell because we'll also be posting a video breakdown of the stock on the channel right at Market open. This is the trade idea that in my opinion, at least based on my research, you're not going to want to miss. Okay, let's get right into it. So week after week after week, we've been hearing story after Story of more and more businesses closing their doors, shutting down store after store after store and one of the primarily cited reasons for this is crime specifically in regards to theft and violent crime.

If you look at the overall data from the national Retail Federation They estimate that retail sales revenue lost to theft wet from averaging around 50 billion a year in 2016 to 2018 to around 90 billion after the pandemic and is projected to hit an all-time high this year in 2023 and then continue to consistently grow into 2024 and 2025. And so now you have a lot of exacts that are going and looking at this data and questioning why they're even going to bother keeping stores open if they're already struggling with profitability in some of these low margin businesses. Well, why the hell are they going to to stay open when things are only going to get worse? And the conclusion that they are coming to is, let's go ahead and close. In other words, more and more of our economy.

Here in the United States is becoming completely uninvestable and you look at Revenue loss to retail theft per capita and you look at California Specifically, you're losing almost eight dollars per capita AKA per person who lives in the state and this is the most populous state, right? Then you have Texas at five dollars Florida Almost five dollars New York Just under four dollars. And if you open up the data, most of this crime is happening in the cities. you look at cities most affected by organized crime. Number one is: Los Angeles Where I live here? Organized crime is basically a hobby people don't invite you out to launcher like hey, let's go loot the local 7-Eleven and I'm like, no actually I don't feel like looting today and they're like what you're a loser you got SF you got New York you have Houston Miami Chicago Sacramento Seattle Atlanta Dallas Pretty much all of the major cities across the board, right? And even worse, not only did retailers report a 26.5 percent increase in organized retail crime last year alone, but 81.2 percent of participants said the violence and aggression with that crime increased in the past year 81.2 percent.

So it's not only oh, I'm gonna have my low margin inventory stolen, but now it's Oh man. I Need to worry about my employee safety I Need to worry about my customer safety I Need to worry about my safety. These are not stats that suggest a healthy business environment or a economy that can sustain this retail segment and you can blame whatever party you want or come up with any reason why this is happening or what could be the potential solution. I'm not trying to get into that in this video, but what I am trying to highlight is what is going on here for businesses and why you're seeing a lot of retail stores just completely struggle right now and not just retail stores, but anything that's customer facing and has a in-person brick and mortar location.

What's happening in a lot of localities in the United States is you have number one crime increasing and then the businesses start going unprofitable. It starts being not worth it to operate in that locality and then they decide to leave and then all of a sudden that locality gets completely gutted. All the businesses are gone, and the people are screwed, and a lot of people don't realize what's going on here. It's really, really nasty and one of the most controversial and mainstream examples of this right now is Walmart Walmarts are closing left and right and Walmart is a main staple of American society, right? It's the chain to go to for groceries In many areas of the US, it's the number one Grocer in the U.S it's a top retailer of many other Goods in many neighborhoods, especially poorer areas within the country.

It's the only area where people could actually find Fresh Foods and because of Walmart's massive scale, they're able to give great great deals. In fact, Walmart as you know, is known for displacing a lot of local businesses because they offer such dirt cheap prices because it's so easy for them to be profitable. Turns out, even Walmart is struggling now because of all this crime. Walmart Recently announced they will be laying off hundreds of workers and it's dramatically winding down its operations in many key areas.

The Daily Mail Reports Walmart Decided to shut 17 of its stores across nine states after. CEO Doug McMillan Warned in December that theft was the highest it's ever been around the country and if it did not slow down, stores would have to close and Walmart is actually now closing half of its stores in Chicago half and Walmart says that the stores being closed have not been profitable for years and it's becoming harder and harder and harder to find any reason to think that those stores May one day potentially be financially viable. Walmart Said these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year and the losses nearly doubled in just the last five years. Specifically, and honestly, if you look at the data, a lot of the neighborhoods that they're closing stores in while those stores have historically been kind of on the margin, but the crime has been the final straw that's broken the camel's back and it's been really, really ugly.

And you look at some of the behavior that employees have to deal with at a lot of these: Walmarts I Mean, it's just atrocious. This poor lady got beat by a shoplifter. and yeah, I know, anecdotal but it if you look at the overall statistics again, it shows that violence is going up. So the overall stats suggests that across the industry you're seeing more and more violence.

This is terrible. terrible for retail stores. People are going to be worried to work there to go shopping there, to own stores, to invest in these businesses, so on and so forth. And what happens after that while businesses make the decision to up and leave and that usually gots the community who depends on that business more and more communities are going to be completely destroyed by the fact that there's so much crime that businesses don't even want to operate within them.

ABC Chicago Reported this from an individual that lives in one of these communities that's getting gutted. Quote: It's a trend we're seeing with the Walmarts the Whole Foods the targets. Everyone gets so excited when they hear they're coming to the neighborhood, especially if they have Fresh Foods fresh vegetables and then within a matter of years the corporation decides their bottom line is more important than Community Health These neighborhoods are struggling Cole Said people feel abandoned, right? We need some healthy eating options and this is such a frustrating quote because when these businesses leave, well, the people in that Community From their perspective, it's the business's fault, but in reality these businesses have no ability to operate in these neighborhoods profitably and the reason is because of all this crime. And then people say but wait Charlie no, these businesses.

They're greedy. They should not care about their bottom line. They should care about these communities. But it's like wait a second.

A business isn't a charity, right? They can't operate at a loss forever. That's not a sustainable business model. If Walmart had followed that, they never would have spread across the country. And hey, you know what? I'm not going to defend Walmart I Think it probably would have been better if we had millions of small local mom and pop businesses versus just the big Walmart But at the end of the day, whether it's a big business or a small business, it has to be operating profitably or the business doesn't make any sense and it can't operate profitably if there's no infrastructure in the neighborhood to help it manage its crime and help it actually operate.

But if these local neighborhoods can't enforce crime and allow the situation where businesses can Thrive and actually serve a community, the businesses will leave and the communities will be destroyed and that whole economy in that little micro area will be destroyed. And you'll see this happen all across the country with thousands and thousands and thousands of similar communities. Walmart is literally the king of operating profitably. If Walmart can't operate profitably in these neighborhoods under these conditions, nobody else is going to be able to.

Target Similar problem. Target Said it lost 400 million in profits last November due to organized gangs of shoplifters who have been stealing merchandise from its stores. 400 million dollars? That's like the entire market cap of some companies in Lost merchandise alone Best Buy CEO Said quote: organized retail crime groups would steal entire shells of high value products like Electronics to resell them at a discounted price Entire shelves. So Best Buy implemented measures like locking up products and hiring extra security staff to minimize theft and protect staff and customers.

but the outlet revealed it would be closing down 20 large format stores this year as consumer spending slowed and losses increased. So heading into this environment where people have less money to spend and input costs are much higher. Labor costs are much higher, while at the same time, a lot of these companies have to pay all this extra money out in losses and in extra security protocols completely ridiculous. This shouldn't be something that happens if your corporation and you pay really high taxes, which you do in a lot of these states where the problem is the biggest, you should at least have some level of infrastructure as a return for that.

Otherwise, why the hell are we paying taxes you look over at CVS a staple Pharmacy and convenient shop Nationwide Well, they just announced their goal to close at least 300 CVS stores a year through the end of 2026. And there's no shortage of trending articles about how professional thieves have been stealing thousands and thousands of dollars from CVS like candy in Florida They're investing heavily in New Time Delay saves you can find story after: Story Of Crime Happening at their locations like just yesterday, a woman stole 61 pints of Ben and Jerry's just ridiculous levels of lawlessness. That sounds like innocent petty theft, but if you look at it on a broad scale, it's destroying completely destroying a lot of these stores abilities to operate. And if this is what we're seeing on Broad Big Corporate America Companies that we all know? well, what about these small mama in pop stores while they're seeing this wave of crime and they're just like, you know what? We're just gonna shut down.

We can't afford to take the L in certain localities like the big corporations can, so we're just going to take the L and obviously they just get steamrolled over because nobody knows their name. The fact of the matter is, folks that until this crime wave is under control, you're going to see more and more companies go Belly Up and more and more of this economy in the United States Be completely uninvestable and it's going to destroy a lot of the major cities and communities that we like today. and this crime is really just one more straw that is breaking the camel's back. Businesses have already had to deal with insane insane closures.

In 2020, they've had to deal with insane Rising input costs. really crazy instability. With that, they've had to deal with dropping sales. The last year we've had to deal with a Fed that is just going and choking the economy in order to hopefully bring down inflation.

While at the same time, we're not doing anything about the whole energy crisis where Opec's trying to raise the cost as much as possible. all of these things are starting to get to a point where they're becoming unworkable. completely unworkable for even some of the strongest companies in the country. So anyways, folks that caps off today's video, let us know what your thoughts are on this down below and we'll see you in the next one.

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