Ever come back from a long holiday weekend and feel like the world moved on without you? That’s pretty much the vibe on Wall Street this Friday morning.
After stuffing ourselves with turkey and pie, traders are trickling back to their desks for a shortened session that closes at 1 p.m. ET. Volume is going to be paper-thin, which means any wild swings today should be taken with an entire shaker of salt. Still, there’s plenty going on beneath the surface, and some of it actually matters for the rest of the year.
A Sleepy but Sneaky-Important Friday
Let’s start with the obvious: it’s Black Friday. The unofficial start of the holiday shopping sprint is finally here, and investors are watching like hawks to see whether consumers are still willing to open their wallets after two years of inflation fatigue.
In my experience, the first few hours of Black Friday trading often tell you more about sentiment than the entire month of November combined. If the big-box names are green out of the gate, the market breathes a little easier heading into December. If they gap lower? Well, suddenly everyone remembers that “soft landing” isn’t guaranteed.
Retail Names Already Perking Up
Early futures action shows the usual suspects catching a bid. Best Buy and Target are both up a few tenths pre-market, Walmart is nudging higher, even old-school department store Dillard’s is in the green. Nothing earth-shattering, but definitely not the post-Thanksgiving hangover some bears were hoping for.
Perhaps more interesting is the action in off-price and discount names. TJX Companies (think T.J. Maxx, Marshalls) and Five Below are both on watchlists this morning. Speaking of Five Below, UBS just bumped their price target to $204, saying the noise around the consumer is overblown heading into next week’s print. That’s the kind of note that can keep a stock floating higher even on light volume.
“Continued noise around the consumer” feels like the understatement of the year, but if anyone can navigate it, it’s the discount retailers.
Meanwhile, the Machines Took a Coffee Break
If you tried to trade futures early this morning, you probably noticed something odd: nothing was moving. Turns out the Chicago Mercantile Exchange had a cooling issue at a CyrusOne data center and everything ground to a halt for a while. Classic 2025 reminder that even the most sophisticated markets still run on servers that occasionally overheat.
Trading is mostly back now, but the glitch probably kept volume even lighter than usual. Funny how the one day everyone expects low participation, the computers decide to take a nap too.
Corporate Dealmaking Is Back, Baby
Here’s the story that actually has longer legs: merger and acquisition activity is absolutely roaring this year. U.S. deal values are already up more than 40% compared to the same period in 2024, and bankers are crediting the new administration’s more relaxed stance on antitrust enforcement.
Suddenly companies feel comfortable trying horizontal mergers again, the kind that would have been dead-on-arrival under the previous regime. Whether that’s ultimately good for competition is a debate for another day, but it’s undeniably great for investment banks.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and the rest of the bulge-bracket crew are going to be printing money on advisory fees if this pace keeps up. I’ve been saying for months that investment banking would be the sleeper winner of regime change, and the pipeline is finally proving it.
- More M&A = higher fees
- More IPOs (eventually) = even higher fees
- Happy bankers = bonus season fireworks
The AI Glasses Arms Race Just Got Real
Across the Pacific, Alibaba just dropped its answer to Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. The new Quark AI Glasses start at the equivalent of about $536 and come packed with the kind of on-device AI tricks we’ve come to expect in late 2025.
Think real-time translation, navigation overlays, photo search, the whole package. The timing feels deliberate, Meta’s version is still the cool kid on the block in the West, but Alibaba is making a hard push to own the category in China and Southeast Asia.
Longer term, this is yet another reminder that the wearable AI war is only just beginning. Apple’s rumored glasses are still MIA, Snap keeps iterating on Spectacles, and now the Chinese giants are fully in the game. The winner gets to own the next major computing interface after the smartphone. No big deal.
Alphabet’s Quiet Comeback
Speaking of AI leaders, can we take a moment to appreciate how Alphabet has clawed its way back into the conversation? A year ago people were writing obituaries for Google in the generative AI race. Fast-forward to this week and Gemini 3 plus the new Ironwood chip have the stock hitting all-time highs.
Don’t look now, but the “razor-thin lead” narrative is starting to feel a little dated. When your market cap is pushing $2.5 trillion and you’re still growing cloud revenue 30%+, it’s okay to admit you’re back on top, at least for today.
Quick Hits From Around the Globe
- India GDP smashed estimates at 8.2% for Q3, yet another reminder that the fastest-growing major economy crown isn’t changing hands anytime soon.
- Deere got a price-target cut from Evercore after missing the agricultural turnaround many were hoping for. The cycle bottom is still out there somewhere.
- S&P 500 futures are up about 0.3% as I write this, perfectly boring action for a post-holiday Friday.
All in all, it’s one of those sessions where the real story isn’t in the price action today, it’s in the signals flashing about the next six months. Holiday spending trends, deal pipeline strength, wearable AI adoption, those are the themes that could define 2026 portfolios.
Me? I’m keeping an eye on the discount retailers and the investment banks. When the crowd zig-zags on consumer health, the off-price names usually zig the other way. And when M&A heats up, the bankers eat first.
Enjoy the half-day, folks. The real fireworks probably start next week when volume returns and December positioning kicks into high gear.
Disclosure: The author holds positions in several names mentioned, including off-price retail and investment banking exposure, through various funds and personal accounts. This is not personalized advice; always do your own research.
