What We Learned From Our Black Friday Shopping Experience

We are hitting the ground running in December with initial results from the holiday shopping weekend.

Black Friday spending rose 3.4% year over year according to Mastercard Spending Pulse. Leading the charge was digital shopping, which grew 14.6% year over year while brick-and-mortar sales slumped, rising a meager 0.7%. To be fair, that includes high promotional activity but even so, the comparison supports our thinking that shoppers would lean into digital shopping this holiday season.

That wasn’t the only data point supporting our line of thinking. Research firm Facteus found online sales grew 11.1% while in-store sales fell 5.4%, and Adobe Analytics found Black Friday online shopping climbed to $10.8 billion, up 10.2% year over year. Friday's in-store shopper traffic was down 8.2% compared to 2023, according to Sensormatic Solutions, which tracks retail store foot traffic.

Holiday shopping continued over the weekend, with Adobe expecting Saturday and Sunday spending to be $5.2 billion and $5.6 billion, respectively. We also noticed many retailers were extending Black Friday sales through the weekend and today, better known as Cyber Monday. The expectation is Cyber Monday sales will rise just over 6% compared to last year, reaching $13.2 billion. For context, that would make it the year’s biggest e-commerce shopping day.

We did some boots-on-the-ground homework and a little holiday shopping ourselves between Black Friday and Saturday. What we saw were long lines in front of stores that had discounts of 30% to as high as 50%, including those at luxury retailers such as Burberry and Ferragamo. Other long lines we witnessed included those at Nike NKE, Aeropostale, Athleta, Tory Burch, Lacoste, and Bath & Body Works BBWI. The key here is the shoppers we saw were aiming to take advantage of sales, which matches what we’ve been expecting for the holiday season.

Where did we not see long lines? William-Sonoma WSM, Ralph Lauren RL, Under Armour UAA, Banana Republic, Cole Haan, Crocs CROX, Johnston & Murphy, Old Navy, and Pottery Barn.

Our scanning and online shopping showed a number of big sales with the one from Nordstrom JWN Rack standing out given the magnitude of sales it was offering across the board. As expected, Amazon AMZN was a competitor for shopping dollars but we were also bombarded by email offers from other retailers touting big deals.

When the dust settles Tuesday morning and we have the final tallies from the four-day shopping weekend, we suspect what we see will be bullish for shares of TheStreet Pro Portfolio holdings Amazon and Costco COST. We'll be tuned in for commentary on the holiday sopping weekend when retailers Foot Locker FL, American Eagle AEO, PVH PVH, Ulta Beauty ULTA, Lululemon LULU, and Victoria’s Secret VSCO report their quarterly results this week, but what they say about the impact of promotional activity on their margins will be of keen interest to us.

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AMZN and COST.