After evaluating Macy's quarterly stock price movements on Yahoo!finance for the past couple of years, I can see that there are certain times that the company is performing really well due to their rising stock prices which would often reflect positive market sentiment indicating that investors believe that the company is going to do well in the future. The opposite could be true when the stock prices are decreasing. While the stock prices could be moving along with the market and we can assume that when the market is doing well, the company is doing well, there are times that they don't move hand in hand so I would personally say that I think most of the company's movement is due the company's performance. To examine this, I would look at some of the company's earnings and profitability, as these could play a part in its stock price. I would look at things such as their Earnings Per Share, revenue growth, profit margins, etc. Analyzing these earnings and profitability measures would help paint the bigger picture on the company's performance as I don't believe that the trends in the stock prices alone will fully tell how a company is doing