Black Friday Passes With Record Number Of Sales

Retailers looking to get out of the red this past Thursday and Friday were generally in luck. A study of the weekends sales show that a record number of goods were purchased during the busiest shopping day of the year.

According to Bloomberg $11.4 billion was spent at retail stores on Friday night and morning, up by 6.6% compared to the same time last year and the largest one-year gain since 2007.

According to one retail expert:

“Those who have jobs have been willing to spend.”

Before Black Friday many analysts believed it would be a lousy year for retailers as consumer confidence hovered near record lows with the Consumer Comfort Index falling below minus 50 for nine of the last 10 weeks, the first time such a long stretch had been witnessed since the index was started 26-years-ago.

According to one analyst while consumer sentiment is extremely negative that isn’t the entire story of why people buy what they do.

Does this mean the U.S. economy is headed in the right direction? Not necessarily, as one analyst points out:

“Still, it’s just one day,” and “It remains to be seen whether consumers will sustain this behavior through the holiday shopping season.”

It will be interesting to see how much those numbers increase when Cyber Monday deals begin in just a few short hours from the time of this post.

Were you one of the 150 million people who headed out to stores on Thursday night and Friday morning to take advantage of Black Friday deals this year?