Whether the books will be in the black by the end of October remains to be seen, but at least they're making an effort to get ahead with early discounts. The potential problem here is that this has the potential to move up the earnings and show lower results later. That's not even necessarily a problem unless market watchers obsess over the monthly results. One of these days we're all going to move beyond the fixation on monthly and especially quarterly results and start thinking long term but we're far from that point today.
The year’s most popular discount shopping event, referring to the Friday after Thanksgiving, is arriving ahead of Halloween this year, with some promotions beginning this week and others throughout November.
Both retailers who have had tepid sales lately (Wal-Mart Stores, Sears) and those with rising sales (Amazon, Target) are pushing the tradition forward in a bid to snag shoppers’ limited money.
Recession-trained customers are also pushing the stores to offer big deals now or risk losing out to competitors, though there is some skepticism about how significant some of the early discounts are.
The first “Black Friday Now” deals at Sears will be available beginning Friday and Saturday.
