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Black Friday Buying, Markets Rise on Short Week, and My Ninth Great Grandmother

  • Writer: Doug MacGray
    Doug MacGray
  • 4 days ago
  • 5 min read

November 30, 2025


U.S. RETAILS SALES UP: In September, retail sales rose by 0.2% from the prior month, and were 4.3% higher than a year prior. Due to the shutdown, we continue to get stale data, but it is better than no data. This September report indicates a positive, continued growth, but a slow down from the very strong retail sales growth during the summer. Retail sales were up 1.0% in June, and 0.6% in July and August.


BLACK FRIDAY SALES UP: According to Adobe Analytics, Americans spent a record high $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, which is 9.1% higher than one year ago. In store data was not yet available. According to Mastercard SpendingPulse, the year-over-year increase in Black Friday online sales was 10.4% and 1.7% for in-store purchases. According to RetailNext, Black Friday foot traffic was down 3.6%.


DURABLE GOODS ORDERS INCREASE: In September, orders for durable goods in the U.S. rose by 0.5%. Orders for defense aircraft rose 30.9%, but even if you remove the transportation category, durable goods orders still rose 0.6%. Every major category saw increases.


PRODUCER PRICES RISE: The Producer Price Index (PPI, a measure of wholesale prices) rose by 0.3% in September. Energy prices jumped 3.5% in September and food prices rose 1.1%. Everything else rose only 0.1%. For the past six months, the PPI has risen at an annual rate of 2.3%.


SHORT AND SWEET: Last week trading was light and limited to three and a half days due to the Thanksgiving holiday. And during that short week of light trading stock values increased. All eleven sectors of the S&P registered gains, so it was a broad-based rally. Due to the week's rise, the S&P 500 was able to eke out a monthly gain for November (up 0.25%), the seventh straight month of gains for that index. The NASDAQ Composite was not as successful registering a -1.51% decrease, its first monthly loss since March. Some are seeing the tech stock decline as a welcome correction or balancing of the top-heavy market, but we've seen this supposed market rebalancing before only to see tech stocks break out again.


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LONGER-TERM PERFORMANCE: Below are the annualized three-year and five-year numbers for these same indices.


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INITIAL UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS DOWN: For the week ending November 22, there were 216,000 initial unemployment claims filed, a decrease from the prior week, bringing the four-week moving average down by 1,000 to 223,750.


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PROGRESS, BUT MORE TO BE DONE: According to UNESCO, in 1979, only 68% of the world's population knew how to read and write. Today that figure has increased to 86%. While that is progress, that still means that at least 739 million adults cannot read and write. Two thirds of them are women. According to the latest census data collected by UNESCO, more than half of the world's illiterate are concentrated in ten countries, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. More children in the world are going to school and completing some level of education than ever before. 40 million more young children are completing secondary school today than 2015.


ALICE CARPENTER'S WILL: Who is Alice Carpenter? She has two distinctions. One, she is my ninth great-grandmother. Two, she was married to William Bradford, one of the original Pilgrims and the long-time governor of Plymouth Plantation (my ninth great grandfather). In perusing my genealogy, I came across her will, dated December 29, 1669 (she died less than three months later). Her husband, William Bradford, died about a dozen years prior. This was the second marriage for both. William Bradford's first wife fell off the deck of the Mayflower and drowned in 1620 while William was ashore scouting a place for a settlement. Alice's first husband died in England in 1621, after which Alice came to Plymouth, and the two became married in 1623. In her will, she bequeathed her "soule to god that gave it and my body to the Dust in hope of a Joyfull resurrection unto glory." She asked to be interred near her husband William. Her will directed her bed to her sister along with a pair of sheets and "a good Cow and a yearling heiffer and a younge mare." She gave her land to her oldest son Constant (from her first marriage). One half of her sheep were to be split between Constant and her son, Joseph Bradford, and the rest of the sheep to her other son, "Captaine William Bradford," (my eighth great grandfather). She gave her pair of oxen and a white heiffer to Joseph Bradford, and made various other small gifts of books and small amounts of cash to friends and grandchildren. Anything she left out was to be divided equally among her three sons. None of these items made it all these generations down to me.


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QUICK TRIP: With all our three children doing Thanksgiving with their spouse's or significant other's families this year, Deb and I jaunted down to Washington, D.C. for an over night stay. We stayed in a hotel downtown, and arranged for a Thanksgiving dinner at a nearby restaurant. When we arrived at our restaurant, it was jam packed. I went to the front desk and told them we had a reservation, and we were told the reservations were running about 30 minutes late. I looked around at the over one hundred people waiting, and I knew that was an optimistic estimate, even with a reservation. By the looks of it, dinner would not be enjoyable due to the overcrowding. We cancelled our reservation, and we immediately called our hotel because we noticed they had a small restaurant. It had an opening. It was a tiny cafe with about a dozen tables and one waiter. They served us a turkey dinner with all the appropriate sides and dessert. The place was so small, we ended up in conversations with other people dining in this small, quiet setting. It turned out to be a very pleasant evening. As we finished dining 90 minutes later, we got a text telling us our table was ready at the other restaurant. Earlier that day, we visited the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art (yes it was open) and walked around the mall for bit.


Have a great week!


Our purpose is to honor God by helping our clients see the objective, find the path, and navigate past the obstacles to a more prosperous future.



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Douglas R. MacGray, J.D., C.F.P. ®

President

Stonecrop Wealth Advisors, LLC

Direct | Cell | Fax

(610) 628 4545




"Everyone needs to realize why I am here? It comes in everyone's life; you ask why am I here? What am I doing? Once you are able to answer that question for yourself honestly, you have smooth sailing." Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican musician who passed last week (1944-2025). He was well-known for hits such as I Can See Clearly Now, The Harder They Come, and Wonderful World, Beautiful People.


"That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil--this is the gift of God." Ecclesiastes 3:13 (NIV)


SOURCES:

INITIAL UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS DOWN: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf

(c) 2025 Anno Domini, Stonecrop Wealth Advisors, LLC, All Rights Reserved

Investment advisory services offered through Stonecrop Wealth Advisors, LLC, a Registered Investment Advisor with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.


SDG

*S&P 500: This is a measure of the performance of the 500 largest companies in the United States, and it a common index to track the performance of U.S. equity markets, especially the large cap markets.

*MSCI All Country World Index X US: This is a broad measure of the performance of worldwide equity markets excluding the United States.

*Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate: This is a measure of the U.S. bond markets.

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