Why Black Friday Is a Trap (Wall Street Journal - Personal Finance)

By BRETT ARENDS

Don't be fooled by Black Friday.

Sure, you might just snag a cheap TV—if you stand in line for a few hours, sprint down the aisles and karate-chop some of your competing shoppers.

But for most people, doing your Christmas or Hanukkah gift shopping on this day is probably going to be a bad move. You have a much better chance of getting good deals across the board if you just wait.

Why?

Easy. Retailers don't want you to know this, but they have come into the holiday shopping season with plenty of inventory. Their shelves are groaning under the weight of the stuff. Their stockrooms are full. They've got all this stock they need to sell by Christmas. And if they don't shift enough of it early, they are going to start cutting prices.

Check out the official data from the U.S. Commerce Department. General retail inventories—excluding food and beverage stores, and vehicles and parts—stood at a thumping $294 billion at the end of the third quarter. That's up from last year. It's less than 7% below the all-time, ridiculous peak seen in 2008, at the tail end of the biggest debt-fueled consumerist bubble in human history. Seven percent. And it's way above the levels that were considered normal just six or seven years ago.

Retailers are betting that people are going to spend pretty aggressively this holiday season.

Maybe they're right. So far, this year has been okay. "Retail sales trends over the past couple of months have been pretty solid," says Michael Baker, a retail analyst at Deutsche Bank. "Consumer spending has held up well." The latest data show a rise in consumer spending through October. And Tiffany reports the wealthy are spending freely again.

Still, there are reasons to question how strong the spending might be over the holidays—especially for all those who aren't members of the Tiffany crowd.

Unemployment is very high. Many former middle-class families have drained their bank accounts and are running on fumes. Home prices—the key to family wealth—have headed back down again. And we are in the early stages of a generational change, as Americans learn once again to spend less and save more.

Sorry to be gloomy, but there it is.

Oh, and all this talk about Americans "deleveraging" their balance sheets is somewhat misleading. Sure, credit-card debt is down. So is mortgage debt. But there is a long, long way to go before household balance sheets look healthy again. And one of the big reasons debt levels have fallen is simply that a lot of it has been written off.

Retailers built up their inventories because they had to. They depend on holiday sales.

The problem for them is that the Christmas season is like a poker game where they have to bet first. They can't afford to miss out on possible sales—but you can afford to wait to see how spending is going to go. In poker, the advantage goes to those who bet last.

No wonder they are so eager to get you down to the mall as early as they can. Hence the Black Friday hype. But from your point of view, the odds favor making them wait.

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