Black Friday

When consumers queued up in a quorum,
To do as investors implore 'em,
They bought quite a bit
Of Holiday sh*t,
And forgot all their debts and decorum.

It's all over but the counting: Black Friday 2011 will go down as the all-time greatest, as sales rose 6.6% to a record $11.4 billion. Still, the salient facts suggest that, as the Zero Hedge blog put it, we are literally "shopping like there is no tomorrow." Both the savings rate and consumer credit continue to contract, leading one to question the sustainability of our one-day shopping surge. Curiously, the second-best Black Friday on record was that of 2008, suggesting that this day may not correlate to a vibrant US economy.
Meanwhile, the social networking analysis firm Mashwork analyzed 270,000 Black Friday related tweets to predict that:

• The greatest numbers would shop at Wal-Mart and Best Buy;
• 18% of all purchases would be computers or tablets;
• The iPad would outsell the Kindle Fire by 10-1;
• 46% of shoppers would be purchasing for themselves.

Need we say more?  (Hat tip to Barry Ritholtz.)

Always Low Prices?

Said an analyst: "Time for rethinking
Whether Wal-Mart is rising or sinking;
Though still they do well,
Their core clientele
Find their incomes and credit lines shrinking."

Kelly Evans, the Wall Street Journal's Ahead of the Tape scribe, writes that Wal-Mart is at a crossroads: though retail analysts see the company's earnings growing at 10% a year, surveys indicate that 60% of Wal-Mart's customers no longer believe it has the lowest prices. This leaves Bentonville, Arkansas' big-box powerhouse in the awkward position of moving up from its financially troubled core demographic to compete more directly with the likes of Costqueau and Targét. Wal-Martre, anyone?