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Black Friday Total Sales Crash 10% (Despite Rise In Online Spend)
We can hear the mainstream media now - "Great News Everyone!! The American consumer is back" - online sales on Black Friday rose 10% to $1.7 billion which ComScore says shows "strong spending." The only problem is - which we suspect will be oddly missing from the mainstream narrative, as ShopperTrak reports total sales on Black Friday crashed 10% to $10.4 billion. While blame has been placed on early opening on Thanksgiving, that is false too since spending on that day also plunged 10%. So, the sales news is unequivocally bad - which is hardly surprising given the collapse in consumer confidence.
So to clarify... (via The Guardian)
Total sales in the US on Black Friday fell 10% to $10.4bn this year, down from $11.6bn in 2014, according to research firm ShopperTrak.
The decline in sales on the traditional busiest shopping day of the year has been blamed on shops opening the day before. But this year, sales on Thanksgiving also dropped, and by the same percentage, to $1.8bn.
A big reason for the decline is increased online shopping, as Americans hunt down deals on their smartphones, tablets and computers.
So, fewer customers ventured out for the traditional busiest shopping day of the year, while online retailers saw sales jump... (via Comscore)
Black Friday (November 27) followed with an even stronger spending day with $1.66 billion in desktop online sales, up 10 percent from Black Friday 2014.
“While the holiday season opened a little softer than anticipated, Thanksgiving and Black Friday both posted strong online spending totals that surpassed $1 billion on desktop computers and grew at the rate we had expected,” said comScore chairman emeritus Gian Fulgoni. “This is also the second straight year that Thanksgiving has established itself as one of the more important online buying days, while Black Friday continues to gain in importance online with each passing year. Looking ahead to Cyber Monday, we expect to see upwards of $2.5 billion in desktop spending as people return to their work computers after Thanksgiving weekend and use some of their down time to continue their holiday gift buying, but without other family members looking over their shoulders.”
So to clarify total sales collapsed by $1.2 billion (even as online sales rose by $150 million)... but everything will be awesome once Americans get back to work and start using their work computers to buy buy buy....
* * *
So, for those with difficulty with reading and math...
The National Retail Federation just held their post-Black Friday conference call to clarify evewrything...
- *NRF: MANY NUMBERS THIS YEAR CAN'T BE COMPARED WITH PAST YEARS (unless the numbers are better in which case they're awesome)
- *NRF: METHODOLOGY OF THIS YEAR'S SURVEY CHANGED DRAMATICALLY (so we should ignore it?)
- *NRF CHIEF ECONOMIST: THERE ARE SOME `SPEED BUMPS' IN ECONOMY (weather?)
- *RETAILERS STARTED PROMOTING HEAVILY DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN: NRF (bye bye margins)
- *NATL RETAIL FEDERATION SAYS CONSUMER FUNDAMENTALS VERY STRONG (but you just said "speed bumps")
- *NRF: SLOWER JOB GROWTH DURING SUMMER COULD IMPACT SPENDING (but you just said fundamentals were very strong?)
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Can we not double or triple seasonally adjust this data?
Can we not create a silk purse from a sow's ear one more time? We have been doing that for decades
Centcom can change the narrative to positive.
Actually BLS and Census Bureau do the same thing: supervisors just change the narrative.
It must be Administration policy set by Val Jarrett.
Actually thats how Obamacare came into being. Jonathan Gruber; chief inmate in charge of propaganda .
Its time to trot out Uncle Warren on CNBS for some flirting with Becky Quicky to reassure the public its all gonna be just fine....of course this will be after we fleece the last ounce of meat off your sheeple bones.....
Yet, GDP numbers still coming in on the strong side. How can that be? "Let me explain. No, there is no time. Let me sum up."
When the government taxes you directly is that collected tax revenue counted as "consumption" in the GDP calculations? The answer is no.
When you pay for a required Obamacare insurance policy is that counted as "consumption" in the GDP calculations? The answer is yes.
This is why I've been trying to get all of you to understand that government-mandated private spending is a far superior way to run an economy than just letting people spend their money as they see fit. The government can mandate whatever GDP level they desire. I'm glad I could clear that up once again.
Buh some Bitcoin you goddamn ignorant, inbred chumps!
https://localbitcoins.com
Go suck a dick.
Go suck your own dick.
Bitcoin = NSA spook op. Just like Tor browser.
sources?
"Bitcoin = NSA spook op. Just like Tor browser."
Exactly, just like Google. A lot people really missed it how fast google went to the top and became a monopoly on the web. It was like overnite.
At the time, they wern't offerning anything different then the other 30 search engines. Am I the only one that has ever noticed this? HELLO!
Just like how Facebook came out of seemingly nowhere and killed MySpace.
Remember MySpace?
Just like the Faaah-Reeee Windows ten upgrade that one gets wheather one wants it, or not!!
GWX configurer and GWX detector = windows 10. As soon as they loaded it on my PC I had my security software stop it from running and accessing the web and downloading secretly W10
Ecommunist is declare problem for collapse of consumer confidence, but maybe is really collapse of consumer wallet. No wage = no money = no spend
You're a fucking TOOL. Go jerk off on your bitcoins. You're a HORRIBLE ambassador for bitcoins, but perhaps that is your mission.
...but you sound immature enough to be an adolescent, so I dunno...
huh? Muh was an ambassador for wha?
Yep. Obnoxious, dumb kid.
When you have achieved Satoshi consciousness, then you can go around calling people "dumb". Okay?
WTF fonestar, this is ZH. Go peddle that bullshit on the Yahoo boards where pump & dump schemes for fiat actually work somewhat.
But nmewn, you can't win if you don't play!
Miffed;-)
Be sure to replace the alcohol from Dad's bottles with water,
so the pilferage doesn't show up quickly.
coinhead was in a dad's Bagdhad when you were still asking for paper or plastic bags.
I only think CENTCOM can affect oil prices directly.
Oil prices don't effect anyone. People need to watch teh price of BTC.
Whatever meds you're on aren't working. Tell mommy to call your shrink first thing in the morning, m'kay?
"I only think CENTCOM can affect oil prices directly. "
Whatever happened to the good old days when they blamed the "speculators" for price swings?
Whoopsy daisy lol
I did some grocery shopping at the local Walmarts on Friday morning. It was like the average weekend. On Saturday I went to Academy to get some sweatshirts as it is getting chilly. A little bit more busy than usual. The Burlington Coat Factory was like an average weekend. Then I went back to Walmart today to get some ingredients for a pie. The place was dead empty. There must have been more employees than workers. This is a Sunday where the Cowboys already played on Thursday, so it's not people staying home to watch the game.
The kids want an Iphone 6, so I told them to get a job.
Have the kids asked Uncle Barry for one of his phones?
Cell fonez will come with BTC or script-mining chips in a few years. And you guyz will be able to say "I was not there, actually I was clueless".
The wife says Target near the Twin Cities was a little busier but Good Will was packed.
I went to Home Depot to get a Christmas tree, kind of our day after thanksgiving tradition. Parking lot was no more full than usual. After I got home, I realized we never got a couple things for the tree. Had to go to Walmart, braced for the worst, but it really wasn't bad. Check outline in the home and garden center had a few people in line, so I got what I needed and went to the ammo counter, got a box or two so I could pay for my shit there, and walked out. Walking back past that register near where I came in, it was empty. The parking lot was no more full than it usually is, and I thought it would be swamped. I did go by a locally owned gun store that has sales, just to see of they had any optics on sale since I am in the market for one, and they had a lot of people in there. Go figure....
"and went to the ammo counter"
Did you perchance to see any of the highly elusive 22LR while there? Saw some at Gander Mountain this weekend - stupid shits wanted 20 cents a round. I passed.
Gee, I sure hope the .0000001 BTC I get from it is worth it. The horrendously bad battery life and burnt hands/ears from yet another chip running 24/7 sound like a bit of a downside.
"Cell fonez will come with BTC or script-mining chips in a few years."
Hopefully the newest version of the PlayStation will too. Maybe then we can a break from your trolling.
Ditto, except for the Apple part.
That was clever.
Walmart on Friday noon, still had 52" televisions up front and I had 0 wait time in the checkout.
The rest of the area malls (poor quality bookstores for me) were dead.
Western PA. Just another weekday afternoon.
Well I went by the Stanford Mall in Nor Cal Friday and it was crowded as fuck. Mainly Chinese shoppers.
Three part time jobs.
H1-Bs
I have a retail electronics store, and this article is missing a huge point. Yes..."Sales" were down 10% but the article is NOT addressing the fact that product prices are down 10 to 20 %. Last year, I advertised a touch screen DVD as a "Loss Leader" for $139. THis year that same deck was my loss leader for $99. Prices are on a deflationary race to zero right now. The profit is sparce, and consumers are getting really spoiled. BEst Buy had a 49" TV for $149. It is truley scary how price of crap we don't need keeps falling, and the things we do need are sjyrocketing...like FOOD. Also, to get our proper pricing, companies like Sony, Pioneer, etc want to see at least a 5% increase in MY purchasing year over year for me to get the best deal, but they fail to address the issue of their product falling in price by 25% year over year. I hope I am making sense to all of you non store owners. THe point I am trying to make is this. Shit is getting cheaper...so the 10% fall this year in spending is actually surprisingly low to me since this merchandise has fallen in price much more than 10% year over year. So looking at this weekend correctly, it was actually busier at our store this year, but the sales tickets are smaller because the items are cheaper. Deflation is in full swing. Oh NOTE: Of course I had a Pioneer CD Player marked at $38 ($11 below my cost) and people still asked if we had anything less expensive. Also, we had many people get "Approved" with our financing company, but they did not have the $60 down payment. oooops
Kudos to you Takeaction2 for keeping the fight going against the Amazon and the Best Buys of this world. I am shifting my $pending to local stores now as much as possible. I can see our local main street becoming a ghost town if we let it
Luxuries are getting cheaper, to chase the shrinking discretionary dollar. As you point out, the prices of non-discretionary items have risen against the value of a paycheck.
This is what one should expect to see, and get used to, as our system tears itself apart, over-burdened by the carrying costs of debt at interest. Past a certain point, the most profitable economic activity becomes abstract financial legerdemain. At the point the entropic forces pick up speed and power like a hurricane moving over warm water.
You're in a tough business. Everything's working against you at this point.
Ya it's crazy how cheap they are getting. What is also crazy is that there are that many idiots willing to GO INTO MORE DEBT to buy the latest and greatest teevee. They have a perfectly functioning one at home, but tell themselves that they still need to go buy the new '4k ultra' or whatever it's called just because it's new, or just because the neighbor bought one. They may be getting cheaper, but people are getting poorer too. "Check out my new tv!" "Cool, check out my credit card balance- it says 'zero' ".
WRONG. Only certain items are cheaper. Overall, inflation was 12%, fell to about 8% last year, and now may be as low as 6%... but not negative.
For proof...
check out cost of rent or new home...
check out cost of healthcare and meds...
check out cost of non-poison/GMO food...
ALL WAY UP.
You are correct that certain items are down a bit. I hear gasoline is currently down a bit from last year. Electronics are not a good comparison. If you want to make a fair comparison of electronics, you'd have to compare the price of torches and candles today versus 200 years ago. To compare torches or candles to lightbulbs is a classic example of comparing apples to oranges.
If you check prices of everything, and take into account what their percentage of an average yearly family spending they are, you'll find inflation is up 6% to 8% in 2015, black-weekend sales are down 10%, for a total collapse of about 17%.
COLLAPSE.
The figures are for all sales, not just TV's. At places like Walmart and Target, that includes food, clothing, and toys, which haven't decreased in prices at all. The only things really dropping in price are the idiot boxes and related peripherals. Computer prices bottomed a couple of years ago and can't get much cheaper than $199 for a laptop. The next shoe to drop is smartphones. Apple is going to take it on the chin in the coming years.
"The Black Friday is the superior Friday" - Jimmy The Greek
"Look at that little monkey go!" - Howard Cosell
This is a real black friday...You ain't never gonna catch a crackhead!
-Smokey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxduMVVnrvU
These are not the droids you are looking for.
Okay, how do I say this? Oh yeah..., Nobody has any fucking money!
And those who have some are nervous and sitting on it.
Nominal Negative interest rates will fix that good......
Except hospitals & doctors!!!!! Do you have any idea how much it costs to get sick these days???
Broken windows
#1: Live healthy, don't get sick, care for self.
#2: Don't sign up or pay for Obysmalscare.
#3: If you get sick, get care overseas.
Their credit is about gone as well.
Exactly.
Nobody's had any money for years; they've been living on credit for well over a decade.
And now the credit is starting to dry up as well...
"NoDebt hasn't any fucking money!"
How did you know that?
With taxes and Healthcare eating me up I have decided to spread the pain around and not spend a dime I dont need to.
Fuck em and fuck em hard...
I still have a little (no fiat, only gold and silver). But then again, I never participate in xmas and birthdays (on either end), so that helped.
Probably more to the point, my cost of living is now zero. Yes, literally zero. Yes, it took lots of work over 3 years and 90% of my life savings to create my self-sufficient digs in the extreme boonies of the southern-hemisphere. But now... wonderful. And though I do feel bad for others who haven't the ability or boldness to strike out on their own, it does tickle me a bit to read stories of how all my effort really did put me in a vastly better situation than almost everyone else.
I say this not to rub it in, but to say there is still time to get the hell outta dodge and escape the predators-that-be... and the insanity that is "normality" in current times. But the window of opportunity is nearly closed, so anyone thinking about getting outta dodge better get their butts in gear, and do so now.
PS: Not only does "nobody have money", but they're so deep in debt they are very near or at all their credit limits.
right, and may i ask exactly what you are doing to survive in "the extreme boonies of the southern-hemisphere" Catching fish and salting it and selling it while sitting in an adobe house warming yoruself with fish oil and on a wooden stove? You are gonna tell you you live a simply life water well, solar electricity, canned food(that I have lived on a farm so I know all about it) yet you got the time to read and post on ZH. Nice fantasy.
Nope. My place is fully self-sufficient. As in solar-panels, native fresh water supply, raise my own chickens for meat, grow my own food (mostly in 3 small greenhouses). I don't can food... where I live the weather is warm enough to grow all year.
I've been describing my effort here in ZH for several years, so anyone who has been reading here for years knows what I've done (and many details). They also know it cost me 90% of my life savings (about $400K), so yeah, it wasn't cheap. But it could have been quite a bit cheaper per person if done as a collaboration of 3~8 individuals or so.
Also, I'm a scientist and engineer, so I can repair pretty much anything when it breaks (and I have lots of spare components). Previously I lived alone for 7 years at a remote self-sufficient (except food) scientific research station, so I understand and learned to operate and repair these systems years ago.
If you really believe it is impossible to establish self-sufficient place in the boonies for $400K, then I seriously doubt you know much about these topics. The main problem isn't practicality, the main problem for the vast majority of folks is inertia & fear. I'm far from the only individual to go "self-sufficient". I went a bit further in the solitude and high-tech directions than most, simply because those are personal inclinations or strengths.
Now I am finally completely outside the conventional lifestyle (produce goods and trade with others). I spend 20% of my time raising chickens and growing food, herbs, spices, and 80% on collaborating with a few other scientist-engineers on a volunteer science project. Not counting the time I waste here on ZH.
You are not out side the system as you are still renting from Uncle Sam and paying annual rent tax.
I do not live within the fictional "territory" of the USSA. So how do you figure I pay them (or anyone) an annual rent tax?
I no longer pay any tax to any entity. In fact, except for rare purchases of goods and goodies I don't need to survive and live comfortably, I don't pay anyone anything any more. And I pay no tax... period.
Other thanks toys for the little ones, everyone is getting ammo for Christmas.
This admin will make sure the negative number becomes a positive.
All about perception, not reality.
Double-loaded EBT cards will take care of the glitch in retail sales reports.
Does the NRF use the same propagandists that the NAR uses?
there must be standards written for changing narratives to be more positive.
The originals and benchmarket were written at the Joseph Goebbels School of Propaganda.
Seriously, think about whats going on.
"We have always been at war with" ... truth.
Not going to haxk it, they're going to need Baghdad Bob on these stats.
There's never been a better time to finish maxing out your credit accounts.™
......on Bitcoins"
LMFAO!!!!! Bullish!!!!
Giving the bankers more free money will save the economy.
"The fundamentals of the economy are strong."
Senator John McCain, November 2008
"Summer of Recovery, Bidges"
-Joe abu-Hunter Biden ad-Delawariyah
was it cold
"The National Retail Federation just held their post-Black Friday conference call to clarify evewrything..."
Who hosted the conference call Elmer Fudd?
And what is it with all the post errors and typos lately? Is the AI that's pulling together these stories having problems with its subroutines?
Editing? Ain't nobody got time for that.
All Tylers are not created equal.
Paging Oniomania...
No way! I spent about $1,000 on Silver Eagles this holiday season. Normaly I try to hold my xmas spending to around $500 so from my way of seeing it xmas sales should be up 100% or more.
I have received a 10% off coupon from HomeDepot every month since Septeber. Just got my December one in the mail. I can never recall this happening.
Does this mean we get a black Monday? On cyber Monday
Can't wait for some hurricane in Mexico to be blamed for internet outages that led to reduced sales.
Send an Obama Care message Dont buy anything this year. Every midde class person I know is gettting raped by OC
The weather was too warm.
Seriously.
rolling rolling rolling, rawhide....
gotta love the fruitcakes who think every thing is just fine! as the sleeping giant awakens, only then shall things change, until then the progressives will rape and pilliage the family unit, the national treasury and God.
repent of your sins and turn your back on them forever, lest you burn in hell.
Well, you see, um, there was some weather in different areas of the country and, you see what had happened was.... uh, it was some weather.
No way, I just spent $88 this weekend, compared to over $1200 last year, surely sales can't be as good as they say. Oh, $5 was on my Starbucks coffee and $15 was on dinner after a hectic day of shopping.
What made you decide to spend so much less? Job loss?
Or just fed up throwing money away on crap nobody needs for people you can't stand?
I used to spend a lot of money on people and they couldn't stand me. This year I'm not spending any money, and they still can't stand me.
so who wized up?
get used to it. it's a down is up. up is down, it's day not night, night not day world you live in now.
Their feeble excuse is that holiday shopping is beginning as early as Hallowe'en for some people.
All right. If people were buying throughout November, let's see November retail sales.
Not the triple-seasonal-adjusted shit. The raw data, compared to November 2014 and 2013, please.
Keep asking for raw data and u gonna get droned bro....
I wonder how much of the money was spent using a credit card that they cant afford...The grim reaper cometh in January....
12 Months Same As Cash! Come and get it.
you got to be fucking kidding me...........you mean all that bailout money to wall st and the poor mother fuckers cant fork up their share..........this is bull shit we are gonna have to get wall st another bail out and fine everybody for not pitching in..........i bet the politicians did their part god damn it now so should you
mother fuckers got 19 trillion in debt still cant buy shit but drones to kill brown folks in other coutnries.....................gee golly guys im shocked.............this hit me like pissing on an electric fench..............im on my way to mental health right now to get check out...........................pray for me guys
Calling positive numbers "black" and negative numbers "red" is racist. I think we should call them #000000 Americans and #FF0000 Americans.
Be careful! What makes you adopt RGB over BGR (or CYM, or MYC, or other). Seems pretty much every coherent utterance is inherently racist, huh?
Also, where's your alpha channel? Do you discriminate against transparency?
Also, why not 0x instead of # prefix? Do you discriminate on the basis of language? Really? How racist is that?
/sarcasm
/in case that wasn't obvious
"Per ShopperTrak" A Chicago firm. Surprised THEY issued this knowing the blowback they'll recieve from the NRF and even their own clients. You don't want to report bad things about your own clients.
The horror. The horror.
I spent zero on retail, nothing needed.
I didn't trample, shoot or otherwise maim or kill anyone on Thursday or nigger Friday. I gotta cut back on the wine and turkey; I slept through the whole thing. ( I forget, is nigger PC for black or do we call that orange, or pants on the ground, or rapper, or AA or bro? can't keep up with the changes in ebbbononics)
But, what was the number of shopping related deaths on black friday? Did those numbers go up or down?
90% of american salaries have been declining since 1980s, buuuuuttt, fundamentals are strong. that's why sales are uuuhh, well declining on the ground but, look up there, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's butt fuck ostroma sales.
We just need a new marketing program,
Black EBT is the new green,
black wallets matter too,
what's in your wallet nigga?
If you haven't trampled a wal-mart employee to death this year you are just not a patriot.
It's burn a business wednesday, have you contributed?
Get those EBTs out, expose that butt crack and let's go shopping. (now yur a walkn talkn bobble head obama)
they need to use more black models in all the ads. that will really help sales. /s
If they use any more black models in ads Whites will be totaly excuded. Even the iconic ('Traditional Irish') Newbridge Silverware deployed a black crack whore rather istead of a winsome red-haired Irish girl.
Have you seen the Audi commercial?
Franz Boas struck again, tryihg to force this self-destructive miscegenistic crap into our minds.
I wanted to vomit, rather than buy their Audi.
https://youtu.be/g_uImzkZWCQ
very cute little granddaughter
I find it hard to belive anyone with a brain or any functioning cognative thought, at any level, still watches TV.
it's the new meme, hunger friday.
I just saw the last hunger games mockingjay..save your money for something else
For months I've been saying the next federal reserve action would be QE4ever. Believe me now?
ABC news just reported sales were up by 14%
Only a matter of time until our money-losing desert cities Brawl*Mart closes it's doors, as has it's 4-year defunct, adjacent, empty Sam's Club neighbor, but I also expect the positive retail narrative lies to continue right to the end.
A couple billion is no big deal, the gov't will somehow make it up and everything will stay the same.
Figure to be revised downward in January
(is 10% the best paint job they could come up with?)
Just another opportunity to BTFD!!!
Black Friday is so bad because it's at the end of the month dumb idea for any consumer holiday anymore. December 1 the stores around here will be packed!
So. . .. I have to say, I don't believe the statistics and prophesies of the National Retail Federation nor do I believe pronoucements today accurately record what happened on Black Friday. Nor do I think worrying about it one way or the other means very much either.
I'm holding out for "Repo January" and "Craigslist February".
but, but, just heard on the t and v set that sales are up 14% yoy
Stock market should soar over 1000 points on Monday.
Just based on basic knapkin math its easy to realize the system has run out of room and has completely broken down. The passed was based on more and the future will be based on less. Future survival will be independence, interdependence and the ability to adapt. People will either be useful or gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I