barry ritholtz reports that the actual sales numbers from black friday weekend are coming in, and they aren’t quite the ~+20% y.o.y. survey numbers that the NRF was pushing. from the wall street journal post:
It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of Black Friday, but let’s go to the scoreboard and see what really happened.
Chain-store sales slipped 0.4% in the week ending Saturday from the prior week, the International Council of Shopping Centers reported Tuesday. Not too impressive given all the reports of jam-packed malls over the holiday weekend. However, when you compare last week’s performance with the same week a year earlier, chain-store sales increased 2.6%.
Redbook puts out a similar survey but got slightly different results. Chain-store sales rose 0.1% in the first four weeks of November from October, and 3.2% from November 2005, according to Redbook’s gauge.