HI Market View Commentary 12-01-2025
DO you believe the Christmas Rally has started?= Yes since we came from 6512 to 6800 and then we had today S&P -0.53%
Was it DUMB MONEY or did the “professionals” need to catch up the toe indexes to look better?
Did we just witness window shopping in accounts
OR did we get scared today for the FOMC Rate meeting on Dec 10th ???????
We had deep ITM 210 Short calls on MU – One of you chewed me out !!!
WE did more to MU and it ONLY GET’S BETTER !!!
WE bought back the 210 short calls for $1.11 or better = $9.30 – 1.11 = $8.19 profit and uncapped MU
Then we let MU run all the way up to $230
This is where we are at today
MU = CCC $8.19 + Dec 12th CCC $11 and selling stock $20 higher than our last CCC = 39.19 more profit we adjusted into MU
We did take a $6.90 Loss on puts
We still be out before earnings
I hope everyone notices two things about DIS
YES we got DIS put to others at $115 or $116 depending on where we got you protected at
YES we got you back in today because Zootopia 2 was the leading movie over the holiday weekend
LAST WEEKS
Why did we sell out of MU ? $253.30
We are taking a huge profit, We are using a stock replacement strategy to still be in stock 220/300 Bull Call, We used a short call with 9.30 credit like we got out at a net $219.30 only missing $0.70 with our stock replacement strategy, IT IS WAY Stretched via valuations
I am NOT PERFECT !!!
Yes I want to pay as little in taxes as we possibly can!!! Long term capital gains
YES the long puts are a short term capital gain that I turn into more shares
FOR UTAH – Gas prices hit $2.99 cheap unleaded and $3.49 for diesel
Earnings
MU 12/17 est
https://www.briefing.com/the-big-picture
The Big Picture
Last Updated: 21-Nov-25 15:10 ET | Archive
Fed pushback sparks risk pullback
Briefing.com Summary:
*Fed pushback on near-term rate cuts triggered broad de-risking across equities, crypto, and AI-linked stocks.
*Mega-caps and AI leaders lost momentum as valuation worries and overinvestment concerns resurfaced.
*Market pullback reflects overdue cooling after excessive complacency, concentration, and rate-cut optimism.
What is going on with the stock market? Following a period in which it was setting one new record high after another, a period when it had no fear of seasonality (looking at you, September), and a period when it essentially had no fear, the stock market now looks scared of its own shadow.
It is a long shadow, too, cast by the enormous mega-cap stocks and the massive AI trade. They have turned into sleeping giants, which in turn has put the bull market to rest.
Everybody needs some downtime, though, and that is the essence of this pullback. The stock market needed some rest, having partied almost nonstop since the April lows.
Casting a Line
If one wants to cast some blame for the stock market’s recent struggles, they can throw a line to Fed Chair Powell. This stock market hasn’t been the same since the Fed Chair declared on October 29 that a rate cut in December is not a foregone conclusion, “far from it.”
Incidentally, the high for the year for the S&P 500 (6,920) was on October 29. Not that it has been all downhill from there, but let’s just say it has been a slippery slope. The S&P 500 flirted with 6,500, having breached key support at its 50-day moving average on a closing basis earlier this week for the first time since the recovery rally began in April.
Stop-loss orders were presumably triggered on that break and compounded the selling interest. But the stock market’s struggles go beyond that.
They also reach into the realm of cryptocurrencies, namely Bitcoin, which has run headlong into a “crypto fall.” Bitcoin traded just north of $126,000 in late September but plummeted to just below $81,000 this week. That is a 35% decline, which certainly fits the definition of a bear market and which has rattled many buyers without diamond hands.
Reports of margin calls and forced liquidations have made things worse, bleeding into the stock market, reportedly, which has been a source of funds for meeting margin calls. The stock market has also been a beacon for de-risking on the part of equity investors watching Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies unravel.
The Gist of Matters
The de-risking hit the meme stocks hard, as well as the AI trade and a multitude of growth stocks that had been riding on expected rate cuts.
Another component of the de-risking was the AI bubble talk. It has been talked about in the past, but it didn’t matter then because the prevailing view was that the Fed would be cutting rates multiple times before year-end. That view fell by the wayside on October 29, and it ran headlong into concerns about overinvestment and debt financing of data centers by the hyperscalers.
The gist of matters there is that investors had doubts about the investment strategy and when there would be meaningful returns on that investment. Oracle (ORCL) has been the epicenter of these concerns, plummeting more than 40% from the high it hit on September 10 after it reported its fiscal Q1 results, highlighted by a 359% yr/yr increase in Remaining Performance Obligations to $455 billion and the signing of a $300 billion five-year contract with OpenAI.
There was an initial sense of relief when NVIDIA (NVDA) reported more blowout results for its fiscal third quarter that investors might have made too much of the AI bubble concerns. NVIDIA’s stock jumped as much as 5.1%, but that gain soon fell by the wayside, and NVDA shares closed down 3.2% in the wake of its report.
It was a massive intraday swing that could ostensibly be tied to the Bitcoin de-risking. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with NVIDIA’s operating performance. Ironically, though, NVIDIA’s supercharged revenue growth (data center revenue up 66% yr/yr) and Jensen Huang’s declaration that “Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out” may have further stoked concerns about overinvestment.
Briefing.com Analyst Insight
The stock market, frankly, has been due for a pullback. It was overextended on a short-term basis, too complacent about risk, too concentrated in the mega-cap stocks, and too expensive from a valuation standpoint.
It was also too sure of itself that the FOMC would acquiesce to its rate-cut desires. When a litany of Fed officials started to rebuff it, the trading tone changed. The switch got flipped from risk-on to risk-off.
The fundamental outlook dimmed, the technical situation deteriorated, momentum trading cut the other way, and the market’s leadership stocks failed to lead.
Fittingly, the stock market seemed to gain some footing after New York Fed President Williams (FOMC voter) said he sees room for a near-term adjustment to the target range for the fed funds rate. After that remark, the probability of a 25-basis-point cut at the December FOMC meeting rocketed from 37.6% to 73.7%, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, and the stock market rallied.
It didn’t matter that Boston Fed President Collins (FOMC voter), Cleveland Fed President Hammack (2026 voter), and Dallas Fed President Logan (2026 voter) all tempered their belief that a rate cut in December is necessary. A struggling stock market latched on to its favorite lifeline, trying to will that extra cut this year into existence.
We remain in the camp that it won’t happen. The mere idea that a rate cut in December is not a foregone conclusion, cultivated by Fed Chair Powell at the end of October, has been at the root of an overdue pullback this month.
—Patrick J. O’Hare, Briefing.com
(Editor’s note: The next installment of The Big Picture will be published the week of December 1.)
Where will our markets end this week?
Higher
DJIA – Bullish
SPX – Bullish
COMP – Bullish
Where Will the SPX end December 2025?
12-01-2025 +3.0%
Earnings:
Mon:
Tues: AEO, MRVL
Wed: M, FIVE, PVH, CRM, SNOW, DLTR
Thur: DG, ULTA
Fri:
Econ Reports:
Mon: Construction Spending, ISM Manufacturing
Tue
Wed: MBA, ADP Employment, ISM Services
Thur: Initial Claims, Continuing Claims, Trade Balance,
Fri: Average Workweek, Non-Farm Payrolls, Private Payrolls, Hourly Earnings, Unemployment Rate, Factory Orders, Michigan Sentiment, Consumer Credit,
BUT = Personal Income, Personal Spending, PCE Prices, CORE PCE Prices
How am I looking to trade?
Time to let things continue to run
www.myhurleyinvestment.com = Blogsite
info@hurleyinvestments.com = Email
Questions???
WHO is reaping the profits from the last rate cut, Banks? = 12-18 month process
2025 was the year of scare tactics and nothing really happened
How much money you need to be in the wealthiest 10% of Americans
Published Sun, Nov 30 20259:00 AM EST
Despite a brief pandemic-induced recession, higher inflation and rising borrowing costs since 2020, the wealthy have gotten considerably wealthier.
The threshold to be in the top 10% of U.S. households by net worth grew from about $1.3 million to roughly $1.8 million over the last five years, largely due to rising stock and home values, according to a recent Visa analysis of 2024 U.S. Census Bureau survey data. That figure reflects the value of what households own — homes, vehicles, savings, retirement accounts, investments and other assets — minus any debts.
In absolute terms, households already in the top 10% by net worth saw their wealth grow more than any other cohort over the last five years, according to the Federal Reserve’s distribution of wealth data.
The income needed to be in the top 10% also increased, climbing from about $170,000 to roughly $210,000 over the same period, Visa’s analysis shows. For comparison, the U.S. median income is $83,730 as of 2024, per U.S Census Bureau data.
Visa defines “affluent” households as those who either earn at least $210,000 or have a net worth of about $1.8 million, a level that places them above 90% of U.S. households.
About 12.2 million U.S. households qualify under that definition, and Gen X makes up 57% of them, compared with 12% for boomers, the analysis shows. Millennials and Gen Z together account for the remaining 31%.
It may not be surprising that Gen X leads the affluent group, given they’re in their peak earning years, while many boomers are retired.
Most wealth gains came from rising home and stock values
The last five years were unusually good for households that already owned a home or had money in the market. Even through the Covid-19 pandemic and a spike in inflation, the job market stayed strong and consumers kept spending, which kept the economy on solid footing.
Home prices surged beginning in 2020 on tight supply and cheaper mortgage rates, which stayed near historic lows until the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate in 2022, the first increase since December 2018.
Major stock indexes also rebounded quickly from the early 2020 crash and went on to hit new highs, buoyed by a massive federal stimulus and a fast economic recovery, as measured by gross domestic product.
Those trends pushed wealth up much faster than incomes. Paychecks rose, but at roughly half the pace. Between 2020 and 2024, the threshold for the top 10% of net worth grew about 40%, compared with about 23% for income, according to Visa’s analysis.
Broader indicators tell the same story: the U.S. median home price rose about 25% over the last five years, per U.S. Census data, and the S&P 500 gained roughly 109%.
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JPMorgan gives bullish 2026 outlook. Why it thinks S&P 500 8,000 is in play
Published Wed, Nov 26 20259:24 AM EST
JPMorgan is heading into the new year with high hopes for the stock market.
Strategist Dubravko Lakos-Bujas put his year-end 2026 S&P 500 target at 7,500, citing double-digit earnings growth and expectations of two more Federal Reserve rate cuts “followed by an extended pause.” Lakos-Bujas’ forecast implies a gain of 10.9% from Tuesday’s close.
That would put the S&P 500 at record levels after an already strong 2025. The benchmark is up 15% year to date, thanks to investors piling into stocks tied to artificial intelligence. AI stocks took a hit recently amid valuation concerns, but most remain sharply higher for the year.
“Despite AI bubble and valuation concerns, we see current elevated multiples correctly anticipating above-trend earnings growth, an AI capex boom, rising shareholder payouts, and easier fiscal policy,” Lakos-Bujas wrote. “More so, the earnings benefit tied to deregulation and broadening AI-related productivity gains remain underappreciated.”
The strategist added that even greater gains could be in store. “Should the Fed ease policy further” than expected, the S&P 500 could top 8,000 in 2026, he said. That’s 18% from Tuesday’s close.
Fed rate cut expectations soared this week after the release of subdued U.S. economic data. Per the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, traders are pricing in a more than 80% chance of a quarter percentage point rate reduction in December.
What to buy
JPMorgan compiled an AI/datacenter beneficiaries basket it thinks can outperform in 2026. Among the stocks in the group are Amazon, Nvidia and Alphabet.
Amazon shares are up just 4.7% this year, lagging the S&P 500. Nvidia has surged more than 32% in 2025, though it’s down more than 12% in November amid rising competition in the AI space. Google-parent Alphabet has skyrocketed more than 70% in 2025, after nearly doubling over the past six months.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/01/morgan-stanley-hikes-price-targets-for-two-chipmakers.html
Morgan Stanley hikes price targets for two chipmakers, sees Nvidia rising more than 40%
Published Mon, Dec 1 20257:18 AM EST
Morgan Stanley sees more gains ahead for Nvidia and Broadcom, as the momentum in artificial intelligence continues.
The bank reiterated its overweight thesis on AI poster child Nvidia. Morgan Stanley’s $250 price target, up from $235, corresponds to 41% upside from Nvidia’s Friday closing price. The chipmaker has gained 32% in 2025.
“We continue to see NVIDIA maintaining dominant market share, as threats are becoming overstated, though we aren’t sure exactly what will turn sentiment around,” analyst Joseph Moore wrote. “Customers’ biggest anxiety for the next 12 months is their ability to procure enough NVIDIA product generally, and Vera Rubin specifically.”
NVDA YTD chart
Moore said that his multiple assumption still trades at a discount to peer Broadcom but at a premium to the broader semiconductor group, “albeit a narrowing one as the absolute level of margins and revenue make multiple expansion more challenging.”
The analyst also stood by his overweight rating for Broadcom and raised his price target to $443 from $409. This revised forecast is approximately 10% higher than where shares of Broadcom closed on Friday.
Broadcom stock has gained 74% this year.
Moore highlighted Broadcom’s large AI exposure as a positive, also applauding the company’s growth potential. He pointed to Broadcom’s tensor processing unit, or TPU, as a tailwind.
“Google’s Tensor processor supply chain — designed and sold by AVGO — is getting revised higher, but this is slightly at the expense of other Broadcom customers — and the homegrown version is also a major focus,” he wrote. “Even before the positive reviews of Gemini created the current wave of enthusiasm, we heard multiple sources of TPU being revised up, from analog companies, from memory companies, and from ODM partners.”
However, he added the caveat that this is replacing other chip expectations for Broadcom.
“Specifically, we believe that MTIA builds for customer Meta — still volume expected 2H26 — have been deferred somewhat, and replaced by Meta’s expected use of TPU,” he added. “Unconfirmed press reports have Meta, as well as Open AI, using TPU, at least in part to gain familiarity with ASIC usage for eventual migration to internal ASIC.”
Bank of America expects a meager gain for stocks next year
Published Thu, Nov 27 20258:25 AM EST
Bank of America isn’t forecasting another blockbuster year for the S&P 500.
Savita Subramanian, the bank’s equity and quant strategist, said the benchmark index should rise to 7,100 in 2026. That implies upside of nearly 5% over where the broad average finished Tuesday’s session.
“Multiple expansion and earnings growth both pushed the S&P 500 up 15% this year,” Subramanian wrote to clients in a Wednesday note to clients. “In 2026, earnings will do the lift.”
Subramanian said earnings should rise 14% next year. But the index’s gains will be capped by a 10-point contraction in price-to-earnings multiples, she said.
The S&P 500 in 2025
In a bear case, the S&P 500 could fall to 5,500, Subramanian said. That represents a decline of around 20% from current levels, which she noted is the typical drop in the event of a U.S. recession.
On the other hand, the S&P 500 could surge as high as 8,500 in a bull scenario, Subramanian said. Such a run would equate to a gain of roughly 25% above the index’s current trading levels.
Subramanian’s base case would mark a slowdown for the S&P 500 compared with recent history.
The S&P 500 surged more than 20% in 2023 and 2024, before climbing around 15% so far this year. On average, the index has jumped about 12% over the last decade.
CNBC Daily Open: November hasn’t been kind — or typical — for U.S. stocks
Published Fri, Nov 28 20252:30 AM EST
Key Points
- U.S. futures are mostly flat Thursday night following a break in regular trading for the Thanksgiving holiday.
- Apple faces a potential $38 billion fine in India and files a case against the country’s antitrust body.
- South Korea imposes sanctions on Cambodia’s Prince Group. which is allegedly running large-scale fraud operations across Southeast Asia.
- Moscow is ready for “serious” discussions for peace, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
- The S&P 500 should rise by a single-digit percentage point in 2026, according to a Bank of America strategist.
The U.S. stock market was closed Thursday stateside for Thanksgiving Day and will reopen on Friday until 1 p.m. ET.
With approximately just 3 hours of trading left for the month, major U.S. indexes are looking to end November in the red, based on CNBC calculations.
As of Wednesday’s close, the S&P 500 was down 0.4% month to date, the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.29% lower during the same period and the Nasdaq Composite retreating 2.15%, vastly underperforming its siblings as technology stocks stumbled in November.
Unless there’s a huge jump in stocks during the shortened trading session on Friday stateside — which might not be an unequivocally positive move since it would raise more questions about the market’s sustainability — that means the indexes are on track to snap their winning streaks. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average have risen in the past six months, and the Nasdaq Composite seven.
It will also mark a divergence from the historical norm. The S&P 500 has advanced an average of 1.8% in November since 1950, according to the Stock Trader’s Almanac. And in the year following a U.S. presidential election, it typically rises 1.6%.
But it’s not been a typical post-presidential election year. It’s hard to see the market, in the coming months, or even years, moving according to any historical trajectory.
What you need to know today
U.S. futures are mostly flat Thursday night. The stock market was closed during the day for Thanksgiving in the U.S. Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Friday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 ticked up in volatile trading after Tokyo inflation came in hotter than expected.
Trump to suspend migration from ‘Third World Countries.’ The U.S. president will also cancel federal benefits and subsidies to “noncitizens” in the country, he said in Truth Social posts on Thursday night stateside. Trump did not specify which countries would be affected.
South Korea imposes sanctions on Prince Group. The Cambodian conglomerate is accused of running large-scale fraud operations across Southeast Asia. The U.S., U.K. and Singapore have also imposed punitive measures on the company.
Russia is ready for ‘serious’ discussions for peace. The U.S.-led framework “can be the basis for future agreements,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, as translated by Reuters. He added that the U.S. seemed to take Moscow’s position “into account.”
[PRO] Bank of America doesn’t see much upside for 2026. The S&P 500 should rise by a single-digit percentage point, a slowdown from recent years because one supporting factor will be shrinking, said a strategist from the bank.
And finally…
Europe’s slow and steady approach to AI could be its edge
It’s unlikely that Europe will lead in building facilities for AI hyperscalers or for the training of AI — that race is considered all but won — but the general consensus is that it could excel in smaller, cloud-focused and connectivity-style facilities.
Europe has “a lot of constraints, but, actually, the more difficult something is to replicate, the more long-term value what you’ve got has,” said Seb Dooley, senior fund manager at Principal Asset Management.
— Tasmin Lockwood
Stock futures resume trading after a halt caused by ‘cooling issue’ at data center
Published Fri, Nov 28 20252:02 AM ESTUpdated Fri, Nov 28 20259:00 AM EST
Key Points
- Stock futures and options trading reopened fully at 8:30 a.m. ET.
- Globex futures and options markets, foreign exchange platform EBS markets and BMD markets were all impacted, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange said.
- The CME trades futures and options across various asset classes, including agricultural commodities, energy, metals and equities.
Trading gradually resumed after coming to a standstill on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Friday, as a cooling issue at one of its data centers impacted traders across the globe.
Stock futures and options trading reopened fully at 8:30 a.m. ET, with other services gradually being restored. Bonds and metals resumed trading after a pause, according to FactSet data, while individual stocks were still trading the premarket.
“All CME Group markets are open and trading,” a CME Group spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Earlier, representatives for CME Group had told CNBC markets were halted due to a cooling issue at CyrusOne data centers, adding that it may take some time for moves in the impacted contracts to be seen once the outage is resolved.
Some services restored at CME, stock index futures still halted
Globex futures and options markets, foreign exchange platform EBS markets and BMD markets were all impacted. EBS markets reopened at 7 a.m. ET, around 90 minutes after its subsidiary BrokerTec EU markets resumed trading.
The CME — the largest exchange operator in the world by market value — trades futures and options across various asset classes, including agricultural commodities, energy, metals and equities.
Cooling issue
Earlier, a spokesperson for Dallas, Texas-headquartered CyrusOne told CNBC the company was actively responding to a cooling system issue at its CHI1 data center facility in the Chicago area, which had impacted customers including CME Group.
“On November 27, our CHI1 facility experienced a chiller plant failure affecting multiple cooling units,” they said in an email. “Our engineering teams, along with specialized mechanical contractors, are on-site working to restore full cooling capacity. We have successfully restarted several chillers at limited capacity and have deployed temporary cooling equipment to supplement our permanent systems.”
CyrusOne’s representative said the firm was in direct contact with all affected customers, and its teams were “working around the clock to restore normal operations as quickly and safely as possible.”
“We apologize for any disruption this has caused and appreciate the patience of our customers as we work toward full resolution,” they added.
Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth, told CNBC it was fortunate the outage had come on one of the slowest trading days of the year in the U.S., just after Thanksgiving.
“It appears as though they are gradually starting to restore some operations,” he said. “All told this could have been much worse.”
Emir Syazwan, a futures trader at Ninefold Trading Co. based in Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, told CNBC on Friday that he had been on the phone to his broker “throughout the afternoon” local time as the CME outage dragged on.
CME halts futures trading after data center issue
Given the timing of the outage — at the end of the week, just after a major U.S. holiday and in the early hours of the morning for American traders — Syazwan said those trading in the Asian or European session would be more directly impacted.
Whether it will create “lasting distortions” in markets depends on how fast the issue can be resolved, he added.
“It’s inconvenient, but it’s not unprecedented, although this kind of event may materially alter market structure or price discovery,” he said. “Current price action already reflects markets being affected: the markets have been relatively flat and trading in a very tight range since 26 November, Wednesday, around ~10 PM EST. And until the issue is resolved, I would expect that behaviour and price action to continue.”
It’s not the first time the CME has had to shut down electronic trade. Back in 2014, technical issues shut down some trading on the CME’s Globex electronic system, impacting agricultural contracts.
Last year, trading of equities, bonds and exchange-traded funds was also temporarily halted in Switzerland after stock exchange SIX had problems disseminating data.
Syazwan’s own trades have not been impacted, he told CNBC.
“I had already anticipated the major markets — especially the U.S. indices — to consolidate until the start of next year, so I went on early holiday at the beginning of the month,” he said.
— CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han and Matt Ward-Perkins contributed to this article.
How Black Friday became a retail letdown: ‘To sustain the ride, they started to dilute it’
Published Fri, Nov 28 20257:00 AM ESTUpdated Fri, Nov 28 202512:29 PM EST
Gabrielle Fonrouge@in/gabrielle-fonrouge@fonrougegab
Key Points
- Black Friday is arguably the biggest shopping day of the year, but the event has changed and is no longer marked by riotous crowds, unbelievable deals and marathon hours.
- Consumers are spending less over the Thanksgiving weekend, and foot traffic on Black Friday has barely budged in recent years.
- “The integrity of the event is pretty much gone,” said Mark Cohen, former CEO of Sears Canada. “In today’s day and age, promotional pricing just gets better and better from a consumer’s point of view the closer you get to the holiday.”
Black Friday has long been defined by massive crowds, rock-bottom prices and rabid consumers willing to bite, scratch and claw their way to the best deals of the season. But these days, retail’s biggest holiday looks a bit different.
Stores are opening their doors later, foot traffic is flat, online shopping is up and, in a world where Black Friday begins in September, consumers are wary, unsure if the deals they’re getting are even that good.
“The integrity of the event is pretty much gone,” said Mark Cohen, former CEO of Sears Canada, who spent a decade as the director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. “Back in the day, a Black Friday price was the best you could ever find on something … never to be seen again. In today’s day and age, promotional pricing just gets better and better from a consumer’s point of view the closer you get to the holiday.”
While Black Friday remains a critical day for many retailers and is still arguably the most popular shopping day of the year, it’s no longer defined by the in-person experience. Millions of shoppers are expected to visit malls, big-box stores and specialty retailers on Friday, but millions more are expected to stay at home and shop online from their phones and computers.
That means a shift in strategy for retailers that have long gone all in on Black Friday, including Walmart, Target and Macy’s. Some, such as Kohl’s, are launching their holiday sales earlier in the season. Others, such as Walmart, are spacing out promotions in separate events — one in mid-November, another over the holiday weekend and a final, one-day event on Cyber Monday. Many others planned to stay closed on Thanksgiving but still had deals online during the holiday.
“I still recall queuing up outside stores waiting for those special deals that every retailer would advertise,” said Denish Shah, the department chair and professor of marketing at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business. “Whereas now it goes over weeks, over multiple days, and most of the time the consumers are doing it from the comfort of their home through online sales.”
For the last six years, more people shopped online on Black Friday than in-store, and foot traffic has been relatively flat following a post-Covid spike, according to data from the National Retail Federation and Placer.ai, an analytics firm that uses anonymized data from mobile devices to estimate overall visits to locations.
Since 2021, Black Friday store visits have consistently been more than 50% higher than the daily average for the full year, but the amount of foot traffic stores are getting on the day after Thanksgiving isn’t really growing, data from Placer.ai shows.
From 2023 to 2025, the number of millennials and Generation X consumers planning to make the majority of their purchases on Black Friday has dropped. It’s largely flat for Gen Z and baby boomer shoppers over that time period, according to data from the Bank of America Institute.
Meanwhile, the amount of money people are spending during the so-called Turkey 5 – the period of shopping days spanning Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday – has declined for two straight years, according to the NRF. Between 2019 and 2024, spending fell nearly 13%.
That decline is expected to continue this year, with consumers planning to spend 4% less on average during the Turkey 5, according to a recent Deloitte survey.
“There is still going to be a day of highlights from retailers, whether it is door busters, … certain additional promotions, etc.,” said Tiffany Yeh, a managing director and partner with Boston Consulting Group’s consumer practice. “But it is more muted.”
How Black Friday lost its edge
When the modern-day version of Black Friday became popularized in the 1980s, it took an entire year of planning to pull off, Cohen said.
“The art was to convince a vendor to give you an enormous discount on cost so that you could create this tremendously compelling offer to the consumer that would then … benefit you for the balance of the holiday season,” he recalled. “But it required an enormous amount of work.”
Retailers had to pick the perfect product, set the perfect price and make sure their competitors didn’t get wind of their promotional plans. Then, they had to make sure they ordered enough inventory to sell out, but not so early that it would cause riots.
But over time, as Black Friday became more popular, retailers began extending the shopping holiday so their biggest sales tailwind of the year could last longer than a single day. First, stores opened earlier Friday morning, then they began opening on Thanksgiving, and then, promotions began the day before. When consumers began expecting discounts on more than a handful of products, promotions were spread to items in every department.
“In other words,” Cohen said, “to sustain the ride, they started to dilute it.”
As discounts spread across the store, the operational feat behind inventory and staffing became even more challenging to manage, leading retailers to spread out promotions even earlier, Yeh said.
“It’s always been a tough one to really staff up labor so significantly for a short period of time,” she said. “If it’s only for a day, people are not going to necessarily want to sign up for that, versus, if it’s for a longer season, then you’re more likely to get the necessary team members and also be able to train them.”
At the same time, consumer habits began to shift in the backdrop.
Are Black Friday deals still worth it?
Online shopping had been on a slow and steady rise for 20 years, but during the Covid-19 pandemic, adoption skyrocketed. Now, retailers don’t need to put on as big of an in-person show on Black Friday, because online sales are increasingly outpacing those in stores.
Stretching Black Friday into a seasonlong event also makes it easier for consumers to spread out their own spending, Shah said.
“November and December are two different pay periods for many consumers,” he said. “It makes a difference if they can spread their spending across two pay periods rather than just one.”
Of course, there’s also debate about how good the discounts actually are on Black Friday, especially in a soft economy where retailers are leaning heavily on promotions to drive sales at the same time they’re raising prices to offset tariffs.
“Rampant discounting” across the industry — before, during and after the holiday shopping season — has left many consumers feeling “skeptical” about promotions overall, said Sonia Lapinsky, the head of consulting firm AlixPartners’ global fashion practice. Some promotions this holiday season could also be disguising price increases, notching the cost back down to what it was before the ticket price was raised, said Lapinsky.
“They’ve had the power to cross-shop and look for these discounts, and now there’s just this lack of trust,” Lapinsky said. “They’re tired of doing that, and there’s a lack of trust that they’re actually getting the value piece of it.”
For example, brands like Gap, Levi Strauss and Under Armour started their Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving, and the promotions were comparable to those offered earlier in the season.
“The whole idea of creating urgency is kind of goofy and gone,” Cohen said. “Like so many headlines that purportedly offer a deal, the deal is something of a scam.”
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