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Black Friday is under 48 hours away. We have seen much data and much analysis out there on the topic, but there are two fairly easy conclusions here…. well, make it three. First is that consumers are going to get deals galore. The add-in third notion, or the second, is that inventories at stores will be very low and many items may have to be bought online (with free or low-priced shipping to boot). But the big conclusion here is that it seems a foregone conclusion that the great deals and (quasi-) price matching and free shipping offered by retailers are still likely to create margin pressure for the retailers even if they have strong sales.
This is a sampling review of some of the promotions from major retailers. No particular order has been given. Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) are worth noting, but the major retailers featured are Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), Best Buy Co. (NYSE: BBY), Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ: COST), Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT), Kohl’s Corp. (NYSE: KSS), Macy’s, Inc. (NYSE: M), and Nordstrom Inc. (NYSE: JWN).
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The Department of Energy has just released this week’s oil inventories data. While there are gains almost on all counts, this may not be enough. The key ETFs that react to the news are the Oil Services HOLDRs (NYSE: OIH), the Ultra Oil & Gas ProShares (NYSE: DIG), the United States Oil (NYSE: USO) ETF and the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN (NYSE: OIL). NYMEX WTI Crude is up $0.06 per barrel at $76.08 10:34 AM EST after the news, which is a far lower price than what has been seen into weekly inventory data in recent weeks.
Updated throughout the day
Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN) took it on the chin in recent weeks after Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) launched its personal navigation system as an app on its new smartphones for free. Despite the company’s guidance and earnings, this stock slid and slid from $38.00 to under $28.00 before its recent stabilization around $31.00. It turns out that the threat may still be a long-term one, but it does not appear to be one today if online shopping data is worth anything.
We just had a deluge of economic data in Personal Income & Spending for September, a rather solid figure on weekly jobless claims and in continuing jobless claims, and a somewhat tepid durable goods orders data. While there is still nothing robust, the jobs data this morning is the tipping point that allowed equities to run higher.
More than 13% of people who went to the top 500 retail websites went to Walmart.com for the week ending November 21. The number was up 77% from the previous week, which is not strange because interest in buying holiday gifts should be about to peak.
Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) wants to follow Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD), Dell (NADSAQ:DELL) and hundreds of other large American companies into China. It is the promised land for consumer spending. The middle class in the world’s most populous nation is growing at an extraordinary rate, even with a modest slowdown in its rapidly rising GDP.
The 
FDIC chair Sheila Bair, who would seem to be one of the less important members of the government’s financial team, yesterday strongly suggested that secured creditors at the largest banks bear losses of as much as 20% to cover the costs of a systemically significant bank failure. That would make the business of providing capital to banks extremely risky. 
Reuters: Chinese banks must raise large sums of capital which could test equity markets.
Markets in Asia were higher.
