Pre-markets are up moderately in today’s half-session — the closing bell rings at 1:00 pm ET, so that investors and traders can take advantage of Thanksgiving weekend. Trading volume is typically light as many market participants are already gone for the weekend. The Dow is currently up +58 points, the S&P 500 is +2 and only the Nasdaq is down -7 points. The small-cap Russell 2000 leads the early trading session, +12 points.

Obviously, it’s Black Friday, given its name long ago for the date on the calendar where retailers’ ledgers put the red ink away for the rest of the year.  Holiday shopping season kicks off today, which, according to Forbes, accounts for +16.7% of all domestic retail sales for the year. Macy’s (M Quick QuoteM - Free Report) , Nordstrom (JWN Quick QuoteJWN - Free Report) , Kohl’s (KSS Quick QuoteKSS - Free Report) and many others are bolstered with temps to make shoppers’ experience satisfying today and moving forward.

In recent economic data, Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) have remained down, while Consumer Sentiment was revised higher (though still low). This is all good news for the Fed, which sees metrics like these as progress versus curbing inflation, but for holiday shopping season it’s still an open question how the final weeks of the year will perform. The Nasdaq will end the year fine, with the Magnificent Seven having led the way to big yearly gains even if companies like NVIDIA (NVDA Quick QuoteNVDA - Free Report) don’t gain another nickel til the end of the year. But will the Dow and the Russell close out the year in positive territory?

Following Black Friday there will be Cyber Monday (going back to Forbes, 71.1 million Americans are expected to employ e-commerce shopping destinations like Amazon (AMZN Quick QuoteAMZN - Free Report) that day). And speaking of Amazon, the first featured NFL game on this day in more than 60 years will be broadcast via Amazon Prime at 3pm ET today, featuring division rivals the Miami Dolphins visiting the New York Jets. You can expect a vast array of Black Friday ads prominently placed throughout the course of the game.

We wish everyone a happy, healthy and safe Thanksgiving Weekend, and look forward to a normal trading schedule starting next week.

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