Black Friday sales are in full swing. Normally, today is all about the retail trade. Consumers spend the day waiting in line, picking up heavily discounted "door buster" deals, and generally starting their holiday gift shopping. This year, it appears traders are also holding their own Black Friday sales.

 

The day after Thanksgiving, the stock and bond markets are open for a half day. Few turn up for work, so trading desks are usually manned by a skeleton crew, volumes are light and the indexes meander about the center line. As such, what happens on Black Friday has little consequence in the grand scheme of things.

 

The real action is before a holiday, especially one that coincides with a long weekend, like this one. In volatile markets, such as the one we have this year, few traders want to go "long" stocks through this long weekend. Their preference is to sell before the holiday and re-examine things when they come back on Monday.

 

This year, thanks to the Trump trade war fears, the concerns over raising interest rates, and a possible slowing of the economy next year, stocks continued their two-month, long decline on Friday. As I warned readers last week, if the S&P 500 Index failed to hold 2,720, the next stop would be somewhere around 2,600. That is exactly what happened.

 

So here we are testing the lows that we put in back in February. From a technical point of view, we have a classic case of a "double bottom." That's when stock indexes reach a low, bounce up, and then re-test that low once again. At times it only takes a few weeks or months. In this case, it took longer. Many times, a correction will not be over until a double bottom occurs. Are we at that point now?

 

I would like to say yes, so I will, but there are conflicting signals. Take sentiment indicators, for example. The number of bulls has dropped to a little less than 40 percent. That's a good sign if you are looking for a contrary indicator. But back in February, bullish sentiment hit a low of 24.7 percent. That would seem to indicate that investors will need to become even more bearish before this pullback is over.

 

We are also seeing some early signs of "divergence." Back in October, when the S&P 500 hit 2,600, the peak daily reading of new lows for individual stocks was just under 18 percent. But this week, those same stocks hitting new lows was a mere 4.16 percent. So, what?

 

When you have a situation where the broader market is making new lows (like Tuesday), while the percentage of stocks trading to new lows shrinks, it is considered a positive divergence. If we see this continue next week, it would be a signal that investors are being more selective in their sales rather than just committed to a wholesale selling of all equities. That would be another positive sign.

 

What would be a bad sign, is if the S&P 500 Index failed to hold this 2,600 level. That would indicate more pain in the near future and lower stock market averages across the board.

 

Against this backdrop, it is interesting to note that according to early reports, this year's holiday shopping season is starting off with a bang. Consumer confidence is fueling higher holiday spending, even while the stock market is selling off the retail stocks that will most benefit from this trend.

 

Hang in there, folks, this too shall pass.

 

As you finish your turkey and prepare to get an early start on Black Friday shopping, you might wonder how shopping became such an integral part of your Thanksgiving holiday. The term has followed a circuitous route through our financial history.

 

Although the term "Black Friday" is a new phenomenon, its origins date back to the late 19th century. The term was first associated with a stock market crash on Sept. 24, 1869.

 

Two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk, tried to corner the gold market. This created a boom-and-bust atmosphere in gold prices. That volatility spilled over into stocks. Before it was all said and done, stocks lost 20 percent of their value, while commodities fell by over 50 percent. Neither speculator was ever punished for their deeds (sound familiar?) due to political corruption within New York's Tammany Hall. The term Black Friday, however, was used to describe that period of our financial history for the next century.

 

It wasn't until 1905 that the day after Thanksgiving had anything to do with shopping. It was in that year that a Canadian department store, Eaton's, launched the first Thanksgiving Day parade in downtown Toronto. Santa lead the parade in a horse-drawn wagon, while Eaton's benefited by seeing an uptick in shopping at their store the following day.

 

But it wasn't until 1924 that Macy's followed the Canadian lead by announcing their own parade. A similar increase in holiday shoppers convinced Macy's and soon other retailers across the nation, that Thanksgiving parades were good for business.

 

Retail sales on the Friday after turned out to be so good that the government got involved just to ensure that this extra business was here to stay. Congress passed a law in 1941 that made Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November. That allowed retail stores to plan their holiday shopping events every year on a predictable schedule.

 

It worked so well that the Friday after became just as important as the holiday itself. In the 1950s, shoppers began calling in sick on Friday to extend the holiday to a four-day weekend while also taking advantage of the shopping deals. It soon became a wholesale practice among workers across the nation. Businesses, after attempting (unsuccessfully) to discourage the practice, began giving that Friday off as another paid holiday and everyone was happy.

 

It wasn't until 1966, that the modern-day term "Black Friday" was officially coined in my home town of Philadelphia. It was there that the police department in the "City of Brotherly Love" used the term to describe the traffic jams, the free-for-all invasion of the town's department stores, and the well-publicized fisticuffs among shoppers that was becoming a tradition among consumers.

 

Since the 1920s, retailers had followed a "gentleman's agreement" to wait until Black Friday before advertising holiday sales. It worked. If one looks back through history, roughly half of all holiday shopping occurred on Black Friday. But that agreement began to unravel in the new millennium.

 

The advent of internet shopping spurred many retailers with a presence on the internet to extend the shopping holiday to include Mondays. On November 28, 2005, two marketing agents created the term "Cyber Monday." The concept proved an astounding success. Last year internet sales on that Monday reached $6.59 billion, making it the largest single internet shopping day of the year.

 

In 2011, retailers (ever a greedy group of buggers), disgruntled to see an increasing share of their brick and mortar sales being siphoned off by the internet, came up with a solution to make up those sales. Why not extend the shopping weekend by yet another day? Thus, the crowding out of Thanksgiving in exchange for more hours in the store.

 

At this point, I suspect someone will need to invent yet another catchy phrase to describe this national, five-day, retail spending spree. It is a trend that has all but obscured a day when, in the distant past, we came together as a family, to give thanks for something more than a 20 percent discount on a 4-D TV.

 

Nonetheless, as a traditionalist who is showing his age, I wish all my readers a Happy Thanksgiving. You can bet I will be spending it with my family, giving thanks for all I, and this nation, have received.

 

This week saw a re-test of the October lows. That is to be expected in most stock market corrections. What is important to the future well-being of equities globally is that the averages do not decline much further from here.

 

That does not mean that if the S&P 500 Index, for example, falls by another percent or so the ball game is over. Remember, folks, calling the levels of the stock market is an art, not a science. Sure, we could overshoot (most times we do), thrash around a bit more, and then recover. What I don't want to see is a solid and definitive drop lower over a week or more.

 

On the S&P 500, if we were to break 2,685, the next level of technical support would be 2,603. That would, in my opinion, trigger a panicky rush for the exits. If the 2,603 support breaks, then who knows.

 

From a fundamental point of view, there isn't much different that has transpired since last week or, for that matter, the last few months. The elections are over, but the new Congress doesn't get a chance to bat until after the New Year. In the meantime, we are already hearing the

noise levels rise.

 

One Democrat, California's Rep. Maxine Walters, a ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, has promised to roll back some of the bank deregulation of the past two years. Another Democrat warned that signing on to the new North American Trade Agreement will require "adjustments" in the deal.

 

At the same time, the FANG stocks, led by Apple, continue to batter the technology sector, dragging the NASDAQ index lower. Many individual stocks have already dropped 10 percent, which would technically qualify as a "correction."

 

In a race to the bottom, oil prices have also come under pressure, declining over 20 percent in the last month or so. In hindsight, the oil price was over-extended. Oil is in the throes of a sharp, short sell-off, which is exactly why most investors should steer clear of commodities. It takes a strong stomach to weather the ups and downs of a commodity cycle.

 

Both equities and energy, however, are due for a bounce, which should happen soon. The Iranian embargo, as I predicted, is not working out as well as the president had hoped this second time around. Since many nations did not and do not agree with Trump's unilateral decision to re-instate an embargo on Iranian oil, its effectiveness has been dramatically reduced. Cheating is rampant. Nations may be grudgingly forced to pay lip-service to the U.S. embargo but are looking the other way, allowing their companies to find ways around the Iranian oil embargo.

 

Of course, if you follow the financial news, the bulls of September have now all turned bearish. The TV Talking Heads are showcasing one "Permabear" after another, who are confidently predicting (for the 100th time in the last two years) that this time they are going to be

right. Calls that "The end is nigh," or "Run for the hills," should be ignored.

 

In this atmosphere of panic, pain and fear, try to remember the positives. Seasonality is in the bull's favor. The S&P 500 was up every year after a mid-term election since WW II. And if this were truly the end of the upside for this cycle, where was the blow-off top that has always marked the end of a bull market? No, it is too early to get defensive and it is way too late to sell. 

 

Hunker down and wait. You will likely be rewarded.

 

Go into just about any supermarket right now and what do you see? Bins and bins of gorgeous red, green, and golden apples. The harvest is overwhelming, but some apples are worth more than others.

 

If you are like me, an average consumer, it takes about 23 minutes to do my grocery shopping, according to Proctor and Gamble. During that spate of time, I buy an average of 18 items out of maybe 30,000 to 40,000 choices. I have little time to browse and, most of the time, I don't even check the prices, which brings me back to the apple cart.

 

You see, I value my fruits and vegetables. The more local, the better, because to me, the taste is everything. Until recently, I was partial to certain kinds of apples depending on whether I was baking, cooking, or just chomping down on one freshly picked from a local orchard. That's until I encountered the honeycrisp.

 

If you have sampled one, you know what I mean. They are everything an apple should be: crisp, with an electrifying mix of acidity and tangy sweetness. It is an apple worth buying, even if the price is two or three times the cost of the next best thing.

 

Why is the honeycrisp worth so much more than the Fuji or Gala? Is the taste really that different, or is it all a clever marketing gimmick? To understand the difference, let's look at the apple business in general. This year the industry expects a nationwide apple crop of 256.2 million, 42-pound bushels of apples. That is about 6 percent lower than last year's crop. Washington State accounts for about 61 percent of that total. The Midwest produces 31 million bushels. The harvest there, thanks to better weather, is up 35 percent from last year. The East Coast will be about flat from last year totaling 58.4 million bushels.

 

In this era of changing consumer tastes, foreign competition (think tangerines and kiwis), and the overwhelming dominance of a hand-full of supermarket chains, in order to survive in the apple business, you need to be close to the ground and light on your feet when it comes to consumer preferences.

 

There was a great article in Bloomberg this week that illustrates the need to be all the above. Evidently, my preference for the honeycrisp is shared. It is taking the nation by storm and leaving orchards in the Northeast flatfooted, according to them. The origins of this apple would, on the surface, contradict everything an apple farmer might have learned about America's modern commercial environment. The honeycrisp was never bred to be grown, stored, or shipped. Here's why.

 

It takes much more pruning than its lesser brethren so that the apples on the lower branches receive enough sunlight. It is also lacking calcium, which will result in brown spots, unless you feed them a vitamin supplement — in this case spraying them with a form of calcium. They are also difficult to store. While most apples can go from the tree right into the refrigerator, honeycrisps need 5-10 days to get acclimated at a mild temperature before they can be put into cold storage.

 

The negatives go on and on: birds love them, so protective fencing and nets are mandatory. They also get sunburned since they are so thin-skinned that the stems need to be clipped off lest they tear into the adjacent fruit.

 

Transportation, as you can imagine, is a challenge at the best of times. Some of these apples grow big. That causes a packaging problem when some of your apples might be the size of a grapefruit. Since preserving and bruising are important factors, there is a high attrition rate with no more than 55-60 percent of these apples surviving to the supermarket produce stalls.

 

And yet, production has doubled in the last four years. It now ranks as the fifth most popular apple grown, according to the U.S. Apple Association. Even so, the demand for the honeycrisp, outstrips supply by a mile. As such, those growers that have moderate weather and huge operations, like California and parts of Washington, have benefited at the expense of the Northeast where orchards are smaller, and weather is "iffy."

 

But don't think that the farmer's bottom line has exploded as a result of the honeycrisp. For most producers, the higher price somewhat off-sets the additional cost of growing and transporting these apples. However, in the end, it is the large supermarket chains that will dictate how much they will buy and sell and at what prices.

 

Bottom line: we are light years beyond Adam and Eve when it comes to the apple and everyone is on the lookout for the next honeycrisp, me included.

 

Stocks are in the process of consolidating after the big gains over the last week or so. So far, the October sell-off has led to a recovery of about half of what was lost. In the two months ahead, we should see even further gains.

 

No matter how much we would like it to, the stock market rarely goes straight up. It is one reason why I constantly advise clients not to check their portfolios on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. And never check them in down markets. Why put yourself through that emotional turmoil — especially when you have no intention of using the money anytime soon.

 

As we now know, the Democrats regained the House this week. As I, and everyone else on Wall Street predicted, the Republicans maintained their hold on the Senate. Some races, such as Florida, are still too close to call. But the results were predictable enough for the markets to rally over 2 percent the day after the results.

 

Since then, traders have been selling. That's natural. Once they bank some profits, and some of the overbought technical conditions as well as investment sentiment is reduced, stocks will find their footing and advance once again. In the meantime, get ready for the political noise that will most assuredly begin emanating from Washington.

 

President Trump, at long last, has fired his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. It won't matter who he appoints in his stead, in my opinion, because nothing will stop the Mueller investigation and its findings from being disseminated. The Democrats will see to that.

 

The question that the markets will ask is:

 

"Who, if anyone, did anything wrong?"

 

Chances are it won't be Donald Trump, if history is any guide. Rarely does the captain go down with the ship in politics.  His first mate, bosun, and any number of sailors might drown, but unless he has been stupid and failed in some way to cover his trail, the president will come out blameless. In which case, the markets will celebrate that victory.

 

My column yesterday pointed out that little, if anything, can be expected in the way of legislation over the next two years. That removes an unknown variable from the financial markets. What's left?

 

Trump's trade war and rising interest rates. Both will receive undue attention from investors. Trade will likely take a back-seat until Trump meets his Chinese counterpart this month, which leaves interest rates.

 

Throughout their careers, few of Wall Street's professionals have ever experienced a rising interest rate environment. Most are too young to remember. Many were not even born during the era of the oil embargo, double-digit interest rates and inflation. To them, this is all theoretical and not anchored in experience.

 

Therefore, they won't know when and how rising interest rates may trigger a recession. What's worse, they also won't know when too much inflation, versus too little inflation, is good (or bad) for the stock markets. As such, most of the investment community will live in a state of perpetual jumpiness. Jumpiness is a state of nervousness marked by sudden jerky movements. We just had such a day on Friday.

 

The Fed met this week and simply repeated what the markets already knew: that a rate hike was in the offing next month and further hikes should be expected next year. The only "new" comment was a sentence indicating that business investment seemed to be moderating slightly. Nonetheless, global markets fell on Thursday night and into Friday because many felt disappointment that the Fed was still on course.

 

 My belief is that kind of overreaction may continue to occur. When few in the markets understands the natural process of a growing economy, rising interest rates, and over (versus under) heating, any hike in interest rates is automatically considered negative for stocks.

 

It is not, but one must live through the experience of rising interest rates in order to understand them and to take the process in stride. Unfortunately, our "professionals" are all on a learning curve. What is theory and what is true will only be realized in hindsight. This is the world we live in, so expect more jumpiness in the foreseeable future.