Bill Maurer's  Instablog

Although this is Thanksgiving week, and market activity will be a bit less than normal, there will still be plenty of action for those who are watching:

Europe: Everyone knows what it feels like to get angry and want to explode, and that's how I feel with Europe right now. Either fix everything soon, or just get it out of the way and destroy everything. Just do something, and soon. Everyone will be watching to see if those Italian bonds stay above 7%. Europe's problems are why I have National Bank of Greece (NBG) in my 7 stock short portfolio, as I believe the name will go to zero. The US banks aren't doing much better, with Bank of America (BAC) losing $6 again this week.

US Congress: Will the Supercommittee come up with a deal? Knowing the track record in Washington, probably not. Why get a deal done now when we can take a few more months to do so. There's nothing else important to do (like create jobs). Any bad news on this front will take the market down, possible overshadowing news out of Europe:

US Economy: Not exactly a quite week. Existing Home Sales on Monday, which will be interesting to see after the great numbers on Building Permits and Housing Starts last week. On Tuesday we get the second revision for 3rd Quarter GDP, which is expected to be nothing or a slightly lower revision. We also get Fed minutes. Weekly Jobless claims are moved up to Wednesday due to the holiday, and we'll see if they can continue the recent success. We also get Personal Income and Spending, as well as Durable Goods numbers and Michigan Sentiment numbers. Quite a busy week on the economic front, despite the holiday.

Black Friday: How will this holiday season go? Friday might tell. The mad rush to the stores will start after everyone has consumed all the food they can, and then some. Gas prices have come down recently, which might fuel more traffic to the stores, and less to online names such as Amazon (AMZN). That would be good for names such as Target (TGT) and Wal-Mart (WMT), maybe even Best Buy (BBY).