Russ-

I think there is a lot of optimism entering this weekend so the Black Friday sales should be yet even higher than last year's. We hear more news reports regarding the overall quarter or annual efforts instead of just one day's activity.

Come this Monday, Black Friday 2009 is old news.

Among my group of peers we've concluded that retail sales have been spiking during large events and holidays such as Black Friday and New Years, Pres Day, Mem Day, 4th July, Labor Day, Veteran's Day, etc.... and then the non-Federal holidays i.e. Columbus Day, MLK Day (which is a Fed day now), among others.

So while the major holidays have experienced phenemonal sales, it seems retail activity slows down excruciatingly so during the non-holiday periods despite heavy promoting.


another note- about 10 years ago I fell asleep at 6pm thanksgiving night (ate too much turkey, lol) and woke up bored at 2am so I hopped in the car, ran to best buy only to wait in line for 4 hours in freezing cold weather. I'll never do it again because there are so many available options for purchasing products both in brick & mortar and online that makes it easy to compare pricing these days.