Black Friday ... Or Red Friday?

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Dec 02, 2014
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Black Friday was invented by retailers to kick off the holiday season and encourage shoppers to get Christmas shopping done and out of the way the day after Thanksgiving. In 2005, Cyber Monday became popular, giving shoppers the option to stay away from the Black Friday mobs and shop from home on the computer.

This year, the turnout for Black Friday was not as hectic and the stores at the mall were not bombarded with eager shoppers who had been camping outside since the night before, right after eating turkey and stuffing with the family on Thanksgiving. What happened to this retail holiday? And will there still be a Black Friday in years to come?

The economy is not the culprit this time. Actually, retailers are the ones weaning shoppers off the holiday by opening on Thanksgiving and offering the same deals. Black Friday is now recognized on Thursday and for the entire Thanksgiving weekend. Also, the same deals found in stores are also found online, causing Cyber Monday to lose its edge as well.

So how did the stores do?

According to IBM's (IBM, Financial) annual Black Friday report, online sales on Thanksgiving were up 14.3%, compared to last year. Online Black Friday sales were up 9.5%, with mobile devices accounting for a quarter of all online purchases.

52.1% of online traffic came from mobile devices. This is the first time in history that mobile devices have outpaced PCs for online browsing.

All in all, Black Friday sales were down 4.4%, indicating consumers are becoming more comfortable with online purchases and are taking advantage of pre-Black Friday sales retailers offer.

A full report of the trends can be found here.

How is Walmart doing?

Protests also made it difficult to get into stores, or even onto freeways to go to the stores. If you went to Walmart Inc (WMT, Financial) in hopes of buying a new big screen, you may have been greeted by employees demanding higher wages and consistent full-time work.

"Walmart, Walmart, you're no good. Treat your workers like you should," a crowd chanted outside of a Chicago store.

Walmart's stock is currently priced at $86.22 and is currently down by 1.32 points, 1.51%.

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This chart compares gross profit with revenue.

One way to determine whether or not a company is a good investment is to look at insider trades, a tab located on each ticker's page.

Over the past year, employees in this company have been selling shares, none have purchased. What raises red flags, in my opinion, is the fact that the number of sells has been increasing over time, not decreasing. Also, not one employee has made one purchase, which is alarming as well.

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Employees actually have not purchased stocks since 2010.

Gurus that see a profitabele future from investing in this company include: Bill Nygren, Dodge & Cox, James Barrow, Warren Buffett, George Soros and Richard Snow.

The other protest was for the infamous Ferguson, Missouri shooting. Protests around the U.S.were all but peaceful.

Taking a look at Macy's

The department store, Macy's (M, Financial) opened Thursday evening and allowed shoppers to take advantage of Black Friday deals on Thanksgiving Day. The site is also still advertising Black Friday deals.

The current price of Macy's stock is $63.19 and is down by 1.72 points, or 2.65%, which is no surprise considering the negative results from Black Friday overall.

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By the looks of it, Macy's employees are all selling, hardly buying.

Although most employees are selling, gurus such as Stanley Druckenmiller, George Soros and Paul Tudor Jones recently purchased this stock. It's worth taking a closer look as to why the gurus decided to buy while everyone else seems to be running away.

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This chart shows book value per share in relation to growth at 1.74% over a 5-year period.

In my opinion, if stores continue to stay in competition with other retailers and open hours earlier, or days earlier, Black Friday and Cyber Monday will soon become memories. Instead, the Friday after Thanksgiving will just be another normal retail day and the week before Christmas may take on the gold medal for bringing in the bacon for retailers. I predict there will no longer be set days we can pencil in our calenders that will offer deals. Instead, stores will offer deals more sporadically, forcing us to pay closer attention to each individual store and visit their websites to find out when there will be deals. Stores may even offer the same Black Friday deals we have seen in previous years during the entire holiday season instead of during the week of Thanksgiving.