Bonds & Bullion Shrug Off Black Friday Blues; Banks & Builders Bruised

Ugly home sales data and a dismal dip back into contraction for Texas manufacturing production continued the trend of disappointing macro data…

Source: Bloomberg

Black Friday was ‘mixed’ according to reports.

No one really knows how the American consumer did over the weekend – choose your own adventure:

HOT – Black Friday e-commerce spending popped 7.5% from a year earlier, reaching a record $9.8 billion in the U.S., according to an Adobe Analytics report.
COLD – Morgan Stanley analyst Alex Straton’s Black Friday store checks pointed to ~flat to down Y/Y traffic across Softlines Retail/Brands. Goldman Sachs analyst Kate McShane visited various retailers on Black Friday, noting that overall traffic still appeared muted relative to 2019 at most “traditional” Black Friday weekend destinations
JUST RIGHT? – Mastercard Spendingpulse said on Saturday that U.S. retail sales on Black Friday rose 2.5% year-over-year

Mickey Drexler summed it all up best: Black Friday is a “race to the bottom,” that trains consumers to always expect discounts – significantly cutting into retailers’ margins

One look at bonds today suggests that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs may be on to something as yields tumbled (with the long-end outperforming today: 30Y -7bps, 2Y -4bps), erasing much of Friday’s thin liquidity rise in yields…