Black Friday Sales Strong

The AP has this:

CHICAGO (AP) - The nation's retailers got a much-needed sales boost during Black Friday's traditional shopathon as consumers, lured by deep discounts, spent nearly 3 percent more than they did last year.
Sales on the day after Thanksgiving rose to $10.6 billion, according to preliminary figures released Saturday by ShopperTrak RCT Corp., a Chicago-based research firm that tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets.

Last year, shoppers spent about $10.3 billion on the day after Thanksgiving, dubbed Black Friday because it was historically the sales-packed day when retailers would become profitable for the year.

While it isn't a predictor of overall holiday season sales, Black Friday is an important barometer of people's willingness to spend during the holidays. Last year, it was the biggest sales generator of the season.

Not content to let things rest there, the article insists on still painting a potentially gloomy picture.

But experts caution that this year's sales growth may be hard to sustain for the remainder of the holiday shopping season, which has 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas instead of the 32 last year. . . .