Black Friday Shopping

Today is “Black Friday” in the US, the Friday that follows the US Thanksgiving Day (which falls on the 4th Thursday of every November).  The US retailers have prepared to bombard the festive shoppers with massive discounts in their last ditched efforts to prop up their sales for the year.  (Sad to note that the 100 year old UK retail giant Woolsworth has just collapsed before Christmas).

Even the US equity markets will only open till 1pm (US Eastern Time), after which I believe the staff will mostly head for the malls to check out the heavily discounted items there.  The analysts and retailers will be watching the consumer spending and revenue statistics closely to make their economic conclusions for 2008 and forecasts for early next year. 

So what do all these mean to us here in Singapore?  Well, our Asian economy is closely linked to those of the US and the rest of the world, whether we like it or not.  Our year end Christmas shopping season has started too and many of the departmental stores have already put up their Christmas sale ads in the papers.  I see some good deals there and feel tempted to check them all out this weekend.

The external Christmas decorations put by the various shopping malls and hotels have been vastly scaled down over the years, especially now that there isn’t a competition for the mall and hotel with the best Christmas decorations.  How I miss those days, but then times now are not like before.

Anyway, immerse yourselves in the coming Christmas mood, even though you might likely have to scale down your Christmas shopping budget this year.  The safest bet is to focus on what you need, versus what you want but can actually do without.  Happy shopping!