8 Alpha-Zulu

Quick Thoughts on Black Friday Retail

As ususal Markham, you're dead on. Its one thing to get folks into the stores and completely another to actually profit from it. The heavy pre-season mark-downs and early liquidations indicate (to me) that the positively correlated decrease in margins to the retailer will be very taxing this season; but we'll have to wait to see. The buyers for many of the big guys were super stingey earlier this fall when placing orders to stock for holiday.

interestingly, I think that the cash strapped, scared to death average consumer is bored to tears with little excess pocket change to go to dinner, travel, entertain themselves, etc... and he/"she" was in the mall over the holiday to have something to do in an animated venue purportedly for free. The presence of all these credit cards milling around Taubman, Simon & General Growth's malls translated into higher than expected traffic and a moderate increase in yoy topline for many. It would be interesting to see yoy credit card v. cash transaction runs for the retailers.
We'll see. regrettably, my model(s) tell me that the recent yoy increases are an anomaly and we're going to have a very very blue January & February as the rooster comes home to roost.

-8Alpha