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Black Friday Frenzy - Guess The Date
Guess the date of this frenzied Black Friday action description:
On this year’s Black Friday, retailers and analysts said they saw a surge in traffic at stores and malls over last year, and also were noticing that shoppers snapped up discretionary items for themselves rather than gifts or necessities...Near Chicago, Wal-Mart tried a crowd-control technique: handing wrist bands to shoppers who wanted access to the 5 a.m. electronics prices, so admission would be limited and there would be less of a frenzy. At an upscale mall outside Los Angeles, although shoppers were treating themselves to items like limited-edition Nike shoes and jewelry, many paid in cash. “You can just feel it in the air — people want to spend money again,” said Karen Stanek, manager of an Old Navy store in Arlington Heights, Ill. “The mood of the customers is more positive than it’s been in years.” Analysts, mall owners and retailers said that traffic was higher than last November and that people seemed to be spending more.
If you said, 2010 you would be correct (courtesy of the New York Times "Shoppers Flock Back to the Mall to Hunt Deals").
So what was the final tally? Per Bank of America: "According to the retail-data firm, ShopperTrak, sales on Black Friday rose 6.6% against year-ago levels. This compares with a paltry 0.3% gain in 2010."
So all that 2010 exuberance... for nothing?
Q.E.D. for 2011 as well.
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IT DOESN'T MATTER
DON'T ASK. BE A STUPID BUYER OF THE MOST STUPID STOCK AND YOU WOULD BE REWARDED BY THE END OF TOMORROW
HAHA
July 31, 2011
Several new businesses are on their way into Arlington Heights, while others are on the way out.
Clothing retailer Old Navy, a longtime anchor at Northpoint Shopping Center, will close soon, though no date is set, said John Melaniphy III, the village's business and development coordinator.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-31/news/ct-met-arlington-heights-stores-20110731_1_at-t-store-arlington-shopping-center-barrington-residents
Like a Super Hero, America's Black Friday sales will save the world!
More debt is always the answer!
Thats a good descriptor of a mall eh? Debt Trap.
They should make giant Shark Jaws mandatory at the entrance of all mega retailers.
I read somewhere that even the 2008 report was similarly positive. Shop till you drop is going to have a whole new meaning soon I guess.
ORI
/the-plan/
Unless the bottom drops out at 3pm.
Two weeks ago a 300 point burst like this would have gotten under my skin...today it's just making me all the more giddy. What a gift to be able to add to my puts while standing on top of this dung heap rally!
Right there with you. Looking for the right time to fade this rally. I'm thinking tomorrow or Wednesday, reload the puts.
Loaded up the TVIX @ 54.54. Bring it on.
It is opportunity. Just keep that powder dry. More deflation coming.
There is a very simple explanation for Black Friday spending.
WE HAVE THE SAME THING IN BRAZIL (I LIVED THERE FOR A WHILE): IT IS CALLED SCRAPPING THE BOTTOM.
You create paper money that loses value constantly. What people do? It it hard to have a bank account for them. What is the best between sitting on teh paper bills and spend it? Spend.
Since the American public at large does not trust that putting his money in the bank will earn anything, and since in the common pysche of the public the other alternative is stock which is just a disappointement since 2000, what people do.
Well instead of trying to save, or repay debt, they will just spend it away. THIS IS THE SCRAPPING THE BOTTOM MULTIPLIER EFFECT. Add to that a Romney psycho willing to push the oil to 200 bucks by attacking Iran and.... FIREWORKS PEOPLE!
Unfortunately the public is not educated enough to understand that in a debt saturation point, Gold is the only place to be.
The similarities with Brazil are in the money constantly debased, the different is since Brazil experience hyperinflation in the 80s 90s, hte debt accumulating in Brazil is not yet at saturation point. In the US though you have that trigger for Fireworks.
ROFL you just couldn't make that up!
It is all a con game
Tyler, an outstanding piece in the Asia Times from this Thanksgiving Day past, by Martin Hutchinson. Ah, the heady days before the creation of the Bank of England...could back to the future be the panacea Europe so desperately needs ?
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MK24Dj02.html
It's the same story every single year:
1) Black Friday sales are waaaayyy up!
Two weeks later:
2) Christmas sales are up, but not as much as we had hoped
After Christmas:
3) Sales were flat or down after all
Yet this year even less of the credit will be paid back in a timely manner.
Who do they have left to con? Bankrupt retail? Maybe theyre setting up 'layaway' on stocks....or a revolving line of credit for potential stawk buyers?
Just wait until later this week, Tyler, when ShopperCrack lowers the Y/O/Y percentage, as it always does.
Hype and change.
Can you tell us exactly when the updated Shoppercrack figures come out or do you have a link for it?
That is what I expect for this year. Retail will be down overall for the season.
NO, this time it's different. FIRE! The QE cannon right in the middle of the retail rally.
"kill them dead" --Bennie
Yep, this is the reason we are up.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-27/bond-dealers-see-fed-buying-545-billion-of-home-loan-debt-in-third-easing.html
“We need to see a bottom in home prices,” said Shyam Rajan, an interest-rate strategist in New York at Bank of America Corp., a primary dealer, in a Nov. 22 telephone interview. “These are not numbers that are going to get down your unemployment rate,” which has held at or above 9 percent every month except two since May 2009, he said."
Get long the BAC! They're going to ramp this thing full steam.
On the flip side, they need to see $150 oil again.
LOL! I'm holding BAC puts all the way to ZERO, and you can take that to the bank (small community or credit union type, preferably).
Rainbow chaser right into the meat grinder.
My new tattoo:
Long BAC or Die!
Well then, to be fair I actually have Jan and May 2012 BAC puts at $4, each of which have performed nicely so far.
Once it breaks $5 all hell should break loose. And the next couple of earnings reports should be just awful. Where are they going to make money from?
Banking services? That's way down due to legal setbacks and increased customer dissatisfaction
Trading? Unless they're shorting their own stock unhedged that's going in the crapper here too.
The FED? It's the only thing that might save BAC from BAnkruptCy, and the political situation creates some strong headwinds for this possibility.
Of course, your tattoo could change everything. Maybe I'll liquidate quickly once it breaks $5 and everyone else catches on to my logic.
Update at end of day with BAC down to even while SPY is up almost 2.5%: Hope you didn't get that tattoo yet, and that you didn't actually put any money into BAC.
Sunset, I hope you're not holding your puts til BAC hits zero. Then your puts are worthless.
One wonders what mechanism allows a bottom in housing to affect the unemployment rate in a positive fashion.
BAC-heads be hittin dat base pipe!
'Bond dealers see FED buying bad home loan debt' GEE really so whats that going to do? Big deal.
For some reason, I do not expect todays short interest report to be as high as some. After the bullshit in October, I would wager short interest was close to flat.
I have to lol at the pile into ultra small caps going on today.
OT/ DAX just broke 5700 resistance. German bears are getting their face ripped off.
Dude- seriously?
Yawn.....
Should I wake you when Gold passes $1800 again. Or do you prefer to slumber until $2500?
Who cares about 1 day? This is exactly the shit that drives markets up, just to have them come down over the next days again. No matter if one day sales are up 0.00001% or 10%, some pundits will always claim that this is the end of the recession, and consumers are estatic etc. But it tells you nothing!
It tells me that banks are bloating with unsecured credit liability.
Who thinks these "shoppers" (if you can call the masses who turn out
for only the loss leader to be counted as "sales"), are spending CASH?!
It tells you there is a large gap to fill, and with decay sensitive leveraged ETF's like FAS, ERX, and ZSL readily available to buy puts on, any ping-pong up and down price action can be capitalized on quite nicely with these paper trading POS.
For instance, both FAS and FAZ declined by over 70% over a four month period starting at the end of Nov. 2008
And now they are setting up to do it all over again!
uhm.. The PR industry (Ideological State Apparatus) is too powerful.. They literally invent reality, because they frame conscious narrative for the masses. Like how we are talking about the black friday numbers, like they mean anything to a 3% jump in the SPX. Why are we even talking about black friday number, when it's likely a false signal.
The history of modern PR from Edward Bernays to the present: The Century of the Self
Or how I learned to control the crowd while doing god's work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPzGUsYyKM
Excellent film +1
It's astounding that so much emphasis is placed on this one point of data.
"data"
Opps.
You are correct.
Stupid of me.
well, better that than the things The People should really be informed about, like this for example:
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks Undisclosed $13B
Audit The Federal Reserve Reveals 16 Trillion in Secret BailoutsThis reveal is just un-real.
No way we'll EVER get out of this....they keep finding another $16 trillion missing, meanwhile all is supposed to be well because of a .01% 'improvement' in something.
We'll never get out of this debt its mathematically IMPOSSIBLE.
WTF?
I want the Y-O-Y stats on: emergency-room visits by pepper-spray victims, layaway sales, instant credit applications approved, sales from retail chains opening Thursday pm, stores accepting monopoly money, etc.
:D
it doesnt matter if it jumps 6 or 100%. We are done and waiting for the end of this play. Hedge accordingly like we say often.
Could it be the case that people have been waiting for this event to get everything cheaper due to higher ordinary prices?
Would hafta be a bigger sale than last year to be meaningful in the YOY stats.
But... but it's 0.3% vs 6.6% is it not?
Every year there is a "Black Friday" sale everywhere. That people are "pent up" waiting for the sale is no different than any other year - everyone knows that Black Friday is coming. So for the reported YOY increase to be simply a response to the fact that things are on sale, it would need to be a more aggressive sale than in past years. That's all I'm saying. As to whether it was...I don't know. I don't know that I believe any of the "data" right now anyway. :)
Belarusian Bull said:
Could it be the case that people have been waiting for this event to get everything cheaper due to higher ordinary prices?
And "ding ding" - we have a winner. The simplest explanation is usually the right one, as always.
But I think Christmas will be down.
How desperate do you have to be to go shopping at midnight? Seems like a contrary indicator to me. Now the desperate masses will play chicken with the desperate retailers until the last weekend before Christmas.
Shopper TRAK is like the RE 'experts' that work for the Natl Assoc of Realtors.
Everything is always great.
If pepper spraying one another over an xbox at Wal Mart is bullish imagine the euphoria next year when people are tasering one another over d/c iphone2.
Dow 36,000.
Next year it will be people getting pepper sprayed over bread rations in FEMA camps.
@SD-1 Agreed.
For those lucky, or should I say unlucky enough to find themselves there!
It's coming. Fast. Faster then people realize!
You are so pessimistic. That won't happen for at least 18 months.
Ha!
Good one.
I hedging by slowly building my tollerance for capsicoids. How awesome would it be to take that stuff like it was water?
Pepper spraying is bullish for Dow!
me, i'm loading up on jalepeno, mixed with male cat spray, and a twist of skunk! beat that!!!
I'm going long Habanero!
If you take a look at the sale items and sale prices at Saks Fifth Avenue (as of today - Monday), you will see that most desirable/popular designer shoes are sold at a considerable discount. Does not look to me like demand is back.
I distinctly remember news stories on the evening Infotainment/Obama Show about how stores last year were hiring more help than in previous years AND intended to retain a lot more of their seasonal hires after the holidays. And what came of that? More MSM jawboning, but as a tool jawboning and propaganda can do no economic good when people have no money to spend.
The internals of this years 'Black Friday Bonanza' are hillarious...first of all it was 'Shopper Trak' measuring foot traffic NOT sales numbers at all, no way could they tally those in a few hours for reporting anyway.
The other funny internals were most sales were on layaway, and new credit applications. This all means nothing.
People are shopping for deep discounts--great BARGAINS. This can not carry the season, let alone the year. The desperation surrounding this year's Black Friday promotions is telling. The name of the game is propaganda and hopium.
That's basicly what i was thinking as well.
All theyre hopiuming for now is maybe people will fill out new credit applications, which they can then bundle and sell as credit default swaps.
Speaking of credit apps, I don't know about the rest of you but in the last few months I have received on average three credit card offers each week. It had been years since I got even one and suddenly I get dozens, nearly all from what I think of as subprime card sharks, a few from Citi and other major banks but not one with a credit limit over $500 and most starting at three hundred that come preloaded with $249 in fees already on them, can anyone tell me the point of a credit card you can't even use to fill up your gas tank because stations preauthorize now for $126 before the pump will turn on? Anyway, I already have three better cards and need/want no others, and when you give your house back to the bank what can you expect? But what shocks me is that I get any card offers at all.
Point is, if I am getting this many offers in the couple months leading up to the holidays how many are others getting? The nice lady that delivers my mail says a LOT. So, I have been thinking that this might well be a form of stimulus hatched out between the Fed and banks that amounts to many billions but assures that the banks are the final recipient of every dime and then some. If so it would mean the treasury and congress no longer have anything to say about our money to start with, and the best that can come of it is to rob today from future demand, but then if they already know there will be no future demand because a great new depression is dawning they would be motivated to get all they can now.
People are shopping for deep discounts--great BARGAINS.
Yes, but that's no different than any other Black Friday. If, however, the retailers are desperate as you say - I think you are spot on based on the number of Wal-Mart Back in Black ads - then HIGHER SALES won't matter much if it translates to LOWER PROFITS. A friend of mine once said that just because there's a lot of economic activity going on doesn't mean anyone is making any money.
People are shopping because they are not paying their mortgages...
Yes, I have a neighbor who is deeply in arrears on his mortgage, car payments and utilities, and just had a HUGE birthday for one of his brats. No doubt that this will be their biggest Xmas ever.
His justification? "The government won't let people lose everything. It'd destroy the economy." I shit you not.
My other neighbor is using student loans to pay his bills. The rest of the houses around me are vacant. One is stripped and scheduled to be torn down.
The government won't let people lose everything. It'd destroy the economy
Classic. A statist's dream...dood will hold on to the bitter end and prolly justify handing over whatever net worth he has left when the tanks show up on his lawn.
A thinker like that has .
I know two kids who financed jobs through college with school loans. They're both out now, and they can't fucking believe their loan payments. Especially when neither one is making $10/hr. In one case we're talking $90K.
OUCH.
It's becoming clear that going to a bricks-and-mortar college in the U.S. doesn't really pay any longer.
de facto home equity line of credit, n'est-ce pas?
QE3 Coming.
And so it begins:
Goldman Sachs Mortgages# N/A 1st half 2012
Of course it is. Don't forget a couple of the necessary conditions before it is launched. A couple of European bank failures and the S&P 500 in triple digits.
These will be the same morons who will be screaming the loudest when they have to wait hours at the same fuck boxes for a roll of toilet paper.
Door buster deals on electronics helped juice average ticket higher, especially true given the warm weather leading to poor apparel sales.
Of course, electronics have the shittiest contribution margin of anything in a store, so let's all celebrate recrod sales and record margin erosion.
Yayyyy!!!!!
All last week they were asking on Boomberg what it would take for the US markets to decouple from EuroGloom. Well, here it is: consumer greed pepper spraying for an MBox. When the figures get revised downward, then it will be hangover time. As for me, I am just looking for my next short entry.
Whats the lifespan of this new cloud of Hopium, a few hours?
This type of Hopium can last until January. There are some clear possible increases in hopium scattered all throughout December, one of which is staring at us in the face: the next FOMC meeting. Look at all the Zheeple posting about QE3 this morning.
yeah and it could end by 4pm tomorrow. Great call on going long Friday at the close though.
So much negativity here.
The green shoots of the recovery are here. Everything is getting better.
Just running a little low on my happy pills is all.
consume: http://i39.tinypic.com/rthruu.jpg
Barney Frank to join which financial services company as Reach Around In Chief (Lobbyist) as he is retiring from congress?
at least we will see less of barney farting on tee vee...
Finally, a reasonable explanation for today's market melt-up.
Dammit, y'all get in there and buy!
Need more TZA at 33.
Talk about Cyber Monday. I'm going put shopping. Or at least window shopping for later when this inevitably fades.
Exactly. Most of my unemployed, formally high income friends aren't spending on toys. They carefully calculated what they needed to survive for the next 3-5 years (appliances, tires, clothes, etc) and proceeded to max out every card. They have already strategically quit paying their mortages, and were waiting for an oportune time to get the most bang for their credit card available balance before their limits were lowered or card cancelled by bank.
*THAT* is the definition of Capitalism if I ever heard one.
Santa is in such a good mood this year he's even going to deliver gifts to non-gentiles.
Which is a welcomed change, no? We don't need an elitist Santa Claus.
With this in mind there will be much more retail spending.
Let's see, "Back Friday Frenzy" SELL BY date? After all, it is starting to stink...
My over/under is tomorrow afternoon.
The Fat Lady is warming up and will start singing right after she is done shopping on Cyber monday
Here is an idea.
Why not market Thanksgiving as a breakfast/brunch occasion and start the shopping/pepperspraying frenzy at 4pm thanksgiving day.
Seems like ever single occasion is now just another retail opportunity.
It is funny, my 7 year old nephew was mad on Saturday because "christmas is a bust this year". He made a list of all the things we haven't done yet;"decorate the tree, sledding, sking, make snow angels, make a snow man, make christmas cookies". Of course we don't have any snow yet which is the really big problem. He didn't once refer to presents as a reason for his discontent. He was all about the experience of the season.
I wonder how long until he only cares about "retail opportunites" (presents)?
I'd say the US needs to invent a new holiday in between Turkey-day and Xmas.
Gear it towards The Children, include a friendly government message in it.
All Congress Day for the Children. We celebrate the greatest American gifts of all.
gawd you're a tiresome little bitch...
I did my part, I bought everyone on my list another debt obligation, er, smart pad. The IMF doing theirs with backdoor US tax increases. I feel so warm inside, that I am completely ignoring the fact that the 6.6% gain is based on yoy dollar figures that ignore inflation.
in in other news - 2011 inflation rate on luxury items out of China, near, you guessed it, 6.6%
1804?
Awesome! As in, you know, like Rebecca-Black-Friday awesome...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0
Off Topic alert: I just saw this Guardian story at Dollar Collapse this morning about the coordinated nationwide crackdown on OWS and it really was an eye opener for me, and apologies for being off topic but I could find no better place to post the link. If someone has already posted a link to it elsewhere then also I apologize. See excerpt...
The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy
But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy
Nice excerpt from the link below
Bottom Line: Deep discounts have become as much a part of the holiday shopping season as the hanging of Christmas decorations before Halloween. The desperation consumers use to gain access to those discounts, which often sell out the first day, however, is more a sign of the ongoing stress than strength felt in this economy: an aggressive shopper in Los Angeles used pepper spray, while my friend buying the $99, flat-screen television left that store when a knife fight broke out.
http://www.mesirowfinancial.com/blog/economics/2011/11/28/dswonk/black-friday-discounts-likely-borrowed-from-sales-closer-to-christmas/
Many people here seem to not know the meaning of the words "Black Friday." That is the day when merchants in the US start to make a profit. That is, they are in the black, not the red, by Thanksgiving. This is not a bad thing.
It has nothing to do with the frenzy of crowds which often occurs elsewhere in the world.