The National Federation of Retailers is out with some bad news about Black Friday – it sucked. Some superlatives via WSJ:
“Shoppers spent an average $159.55 online, down 10.2% from $177.67 last year.”
“the number of people who went shopping over the four-day weekend declined by 5.2% to 134 million, from 141 million last year.”
“Total spending from Thursday through Sunday sank 11% from a year earlier to $50.9 billion”
The excuses you’ll hear will range from the warm weather in the Northeast to the protests to the late scheduling of Hanukkah this year to the whole “consumers are smart enough to wait til closer to Christmas”. My own take is that online is going to be big all month long and traditional shopping patterns are null and void. There’s nothing important about Black Friday to most consumers anymore. They know the deals will be endless and often.
Courtesy of ReformedBroker
Kos here - My other thought is that it's tough to spend a lot on Christmas when you're earning minimum wage and let's remember, most new jobs created have been at the low end of the range although the stock market relies on the heavy spending of the wealthy to a great extent. My guess is any dips will be bought until cyber numbers are released mid month.
Our TGT long has been a beautiful trade as have the XRT calls recommended late July. Of course in my opinion, when CNBC begins to recommend a trade, my thought is it's near it's end. Will retailers dip and should it be bought? Probably. If you've been taking partials along the way, you're now playing with the houses' money, so let it ride into end of year.
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