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Black Friday Boosts Market Resilience Despite Economic Challenges
The stock market continues its thin-gain session, from the tech-heavy Nasdaq to the Dow future. As Black Friday draws to a close, investors remain focused on the biggest purchasing day of the year. Despite mixed economic data, this year has scored a notable increase from the 69% in the past year.
As for this year, retail and investing have also experienced mixed data. Starting with the S&P 500-35 index, which has posted a 33% year-over-year increase, the SP500-50 index posted a total of a 5% decline. For the first benchmark, its soaring percentage was directly influenced by the strong performance of Amazon, led by names like Amazon (AMZN), Chipotle (CMG), Expedia (EXPE), and Royal Caribbean (RCL).
Keeping with this year’s Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year remains the preferred day for deal hunting, with 72% (130.7 million people) planning to shop, up from 69% in 2022. Plus, the high resilience that American shoppers show has increased market expectations for them to spend an average of $875 on gifts.
Traders have been pretty surprised by the remarkable resilience shown by Americans and their shopping behaviors that year. That goes against market expectations that were driven by economic data that includes challenges such as inflation, higher interest rates, waning savings, and the resumption of student loan payments.
However, certain challenges could motivate consumers to seek out good deals in the current economic environment. The National Retail Federation’s estimate of 182 million people planning to shop during the Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday period reflects a significant increase of 15.7 million compared to the previous year, marking the highest estimate since NRF began tracking the data in 2017. This underscores the robust and enduring spirit of consumer spending in the face of economic headwinds.
Meanwhile, on Wall Street, the S&P 500 benchmark was flat by a 0.01% decline, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down by 0.02%. While the Dow Jones kept its flat gains by a slight increase estimate of 0.25%,
In the bond market, Treasury yields increased compared to the last session. The 10-year Treasury yields jumped by 1.6% to 4.480, the fixed 30-year mortgage rates soared by 1.36% to 4.610, and the 5-year bonds jumped to 4.5004.
In other economic news, investors will turn their attention to next week’s OPEC member’s 2024 oil cut meeting. Brent crude surpassed $81 a barrel ahead of the OPEC meeting next week, where discussions on production cuts in 2024 are anticipated. The future has soared by 52 cents to $81.94 a barrel, rebounding from a 0.7% drop in the previous session, while U.S. WTI crude was down to $76.81.
The meeting was set to be held last week, yet OPEC delayed its meeting to November 30 after struggling to reach a consensus on output levels, moving closer to a compromise with African oil producers for 2024.
