 Analysts and investors are pouring over the data and details from Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Black Friday sales posted a big year-over-year increase before $6.6 billion in sales made Cyber Monday the biggest shopping day ever. But is making retail history enough to get the sector as ACDC sings back in black? To find out, I spoke with Melissa Armo, founder of Stock Swoosh, to take a look at what she had to say. Analysts and investors are pouring over the data and details from Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Black Friday sales are posting a big year-over-year increase before $6.6 billion in sales made Cyber Monday the biggest shopping day ever. But is making retail history enough to get the sector back in black as ACDC sings? The latest figure is Melissa Armo, founder of Stock Swoosh. Melissa, thank you so much for being here and joining us. And if you don't mind, when we spoke, you told me this great story, I can't believe I had never heard it, about the genesis of Black Friday and FDR and President Roosevelt. Give our viewers a quick clip notes historical on Black Friday, if you would. Sure. Well, good afternoon. Thanks for having me, Bart. Actually, I found this really interesting information out. I thought I'd share with you the other day, so I'll tell the viewers. Black Friday, it sounds like something ominous, but actually it's not. Back in 1939, it was right after the Great Depression, retailers were struggling for sales, so they asked the president to extend the holiday shopping period, which would mean moving Thanksgiving up. And he actually did it, but a couple of states fought him on it, so it was half and half till about 1941, when Congress passed a law that Thanksgiving that would be the 4th Thursday in November, so it falls differently on a different day each year, but it has extended the holiday period. And the reason that it's called Black Friday is because it turns retailers into the black, going from red to black, meaning positive in sales then, towards the end of the fourth quarter. And actually Goldman Sachs came out this year and said that this year, 2017, is going to be a big year for retailers, and 35% of their annual revenues may be in this final quarter of the end of 2017. So it's going to be a big shopping period, and you just gave the number. I mean, it's huge, $6.59 billion, it turned out to be, for the holiday weekend that we've just started. Super, thank you for that. I really enjoyed it, and I know our viewers did, too, a little historical. So look, while Black Friday and Labor Monday sales, as we've been talked about are really great, the foot traffic, the in-store traffic is basically flat or falling slightly according to Shopper Track. What's the real state of retail for the holiday season going forward now and going forward, Melissa? What's the big picture that fits into both of these figures we've been talking about? Well, it's kind of interesting looking at the statistics. People are doing more online shopping now on Black Friday than they had previously. We're moving towards a trend. Again, it's 2017, going forward 2018, 2019 by 2020, it may flip. But as of right now, you're still seeing more people in the store in Black Friday than shopping online. But on Monday, on Cyber Monday, you are seeing about 66% of the people doing online shopping on Cyber Monday, waning, not shopping on Black Friday online, waiting to see if they can get a better deal on Monday through sales and social media advertisements, all that kind of thing. One of the statistics I thought was very interesting, though, is that more people in the age group, 35 to 44, actually shop more online than people 18 to 24, which I thought was really interesting because it was a big gap. It was like 50% to 62%. So I thought younger people shop more online on the apps and their phones than people 35 to 44. But that wasn't the case and the numbers that came out in the report. So I was a little bit surprised by that. The other thing was surprised about too. And you'll find this funny, a bar, but more men go into stores and more women shop online. Yeah, that does surprise me and was not moi. But I do recall a couple of years ago, Melissa, my wife and I went shopping after midnight on the morning of Black Friday. And we got some really great deals. But now it seems the sales are starting earlier and you're earlier, even before Thanksgiving, focusing less on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. So what's the strategy of the retailers here? And how big is this trend to sort of stretch out these retail shopping days? And do you have to give a retail shopping day a name to make it a success? I don't think so. But I think it helps because people have in their mind Black Friday. Now people have Cyber Monday, which actually has been going on for years. Now it's Cyber Week. Like this whole week is Cyber Week. I did notice this year actually for the first time more so than even last year. Although there were a couple sales last year, even more sales now before Thanksgiving Day. It doesn't have a name. Maybe we should come out with a name bar and we'll call it something. But I will tell you that there was a lot of sales, discounts off and gift cards and different free shipping offers right before the Thanksgiving and even before the holiday weekend. You know, one of the reasons that Amazon stock keeps blowing out their numbers. So they just had earnings. The stock just made brand new off time highs on the last week. One of the reasons is because they've had a success with the online business. They sell so many things online, plus now they have they purchased whole foods or selling things there. You can get some of the nice discounts it offers in the store. One of the reasons that Amazon is so successful, the stock is so successful is because they're really doing everything right with the free shipping, the same day shipping, the next day shipping with the online sales. So all these other retailers have to come up with new ideas to compete with the Amazon. So they're doing the sales right before. They're doing everything they can, any type of thing that they can to try to get people in the door to, again, go from red to black. Because a lot of these stocks, a lot of these retailers are in downtrends. Macy's is in a downtrend. You know, you've got the Kohl's which stock, which is in a downtrend. Bed Bath and Beyond is in a downtrend. A lot of these stores like people like. Unfortunately, the stocks are not performing in 2017. Super interesting. You know, another thing I thought was interesting, Melissa, is Adobe Analytics says that over the shopping weekend that mobile devices, either a phone or a tablet accounted for about 40% of the total revenue. And that's a big increase, a 40-some increase, 40% increase or so over last year. So, you know, is this trend going to keep growing at that sort of rate or are we reaching sort of a plateau with mobile device purchasing? I don't think it's plateaued at all. I mean, I don't think that's going to be the case at all. I think it's going to be a growing trend where you're going to see a shift. And that is really the real challenge for brick and mortar retail stores. How are they going to compete with the Amazons of the world? Because it's challenging, it's hard to do it. And, you know, it's kind of sad, it's a shame. I mean, years ago, you used to go to the store and you used to have a fun day out shopping on Black Friday. But nowadays, you know, people don't want to deal with the hassle and you get so many offers online. The thing with having your phone with you is you can look at the app. You can go into the store and you can say, listen, I've got everything right here on my app and Amazon cart. Let me check it out and see which is really cheaper. Stand right there in the aisle at the store before you get in line, before you put the items in your car and you can price check it and say, And if you can get a cheaper price, you just press buy and you buy it online. And if you can, then you want to take the time and you want to get online and you want to wake through the crowds, then you do it. But a lot of people don't want to deal with the hassle anymore about it. And that has been the challenge for a lot of these stocks. And then we were also talking about the Macy's. They had a credit card problem on Friday. Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, their systems went down in the stores. And that was just not really a good thing. And so the only negative about, I will say this, about shopping online is say you put something in your cart. Say you want to get a pair of shoes and you plop it in the cart. It says it's available, but when it goes to check you out or when you go to ship it, they go to ship it, it may be gone. There may be limited inventory. When you're there in the store and you've got that pair of shoes and you put them in your cart, that's it. You've got them, you go check out, you've got it. So that's the negative about shopping online. You might think you have something and then it might be gone like that. And then you don't have it and you can't get it. Yeah, I was wondering about that. I mean, a couple of things you said that piqued my interest. One, I know that there were some credit card issues with Macy's. And so that was unexpected. And two, when you say the people who prefer to go wait in line, it reminds me of that there's a television commercial now where they say for people who like spilling coffee on themselves or people who like revolving turnstiles, it's stop. Yeah, I don't know who really likes to go and just get stuck in lines. So it's at the bottom line, Melissa, it's not too late, is it, for people who haven't started shopping yet this year to go out there and get some deals before the year end? No, it's not too late at all. And that's the whole thing. I mean, these retailers are really going to keep doing discounts and specials and offers between now and pretty much Christmas Eve because they need the sales. This has got to be a big quarter for them. This is some of them that need this quarter to be huge. And Amazon's just going to keep going at a tremendous pace. There's nothing that can stop it and no one that can stop it. But as far as brick and mortar stores, I believe they will continue to do specials and offers from now through the end of the holiday season. You wait till the last minute, you may get even a better offer. Who knows? However, you may not get exactly the size or item that you want, so you take a chance. And that's the one thing. The other interesting statistic that I noticed too from the most recent consumer report was that when people were buying stuff, the top number one item was clothing, which I was surprised was talking about the phones. I was going to say it was going to be electronics, but that was number four. So I was really surprised about that. The clothes was one and electronics was four. In fact, books and CDs and music was three and toys was two, which is typical for holiday. But I was really surprised that phones, televisions, electronics was four. But actually talking about that in reference to stocks, that's another good stock. Best Buy is in a strong uptrend too. Best Buy is in a strong uptrend. Walmart's in a strong uptrend. Amazon's in a strong uptrend. Those are good retailers to buy stocks that are strong. The other ones that I named aren't doing so well. Target's not doing so well right now either. So all of that bucket of stocks are retailers that need this big push. Look for them to have all kinds of deals that Kohl's is doing, the Kohl's cash. And basically it's just like real cash where you get the cash off the item or the discount off the item if you have the Kohl's cash. And Target's doing free shipping up until the end of the year as well, up until the holidays. So they're, you know, stores are going to offer deals, but you may not get exactly what you want or you may not get any of your size. And that's the chance to take. Thank you so much, Melissa Armo for being with us with Stock Swoosh who is helping traders trade smarter. Thank you again. Thank you, thanks for having me and have a great holiday.