Record-Breaking Black Friday Sales, Despite Pandemic

figured out why Tom Keene was not in today. He is home with his computer online shopping, and I'm sure he's got a lot of other folks they're joining him. It's supposed to be a record cyber Monday here is more and more people shop online, abandonedents stores and go online. John Copeland, VP of Marketing and Customer Insights at Adobe UH he joins US Adobes based in San Jose, California. So John, give us the early early read here of a Black Friday going into a cyber Monday, leading us

to the final weeks of holiday shopping. Yeah. So it's been a record breaking Thanksgiving weekend already with over twenty three and a half billion dollars in online sales. That's a increase over last year. Today, Cyber Monday, we are expecting a day to break all previous records for US online sales, coming in somewhere between ten point eight and twelve point seven billion dollars. That will be somewhere between

a fifteen and increase over last year. So it's interesting, Um, you know, you you think about those numbers that you just mentioned, John, in terms of you know, the overall numbers and in some of the growth rates and so on, it's just extraordinary given what's going on in the world, given uh, the tough times that many consumers find themselves in here as a result of the pandemic and unemployment. Seems like a lot of this unemployment is now chronic unemployment.

What do you make of it? Yeah, you know what, part of what we're seeing is really people trying to have as much of a kind of normal Christmas and celebration as as possible, right, I mean, I've I've seen a lot of stories about people setting up their Christmas decorations even before Thanksgiving. In fact, we we did that in our house this year, trying to have more of that kind of traditional end of your holiday spirit in

the context of this really really challenging year. And so people are doing what they can to try and bring as much of a normal end of your holiday home as they can. All Right, So, John, we already saw obviously even before the pandemic, UH a year's long trend of more and more share of retail sales going to online. It seems to have been dramatically accelerated here during the pandemic. Is there any reason to think that post pandemic it's gonna kind of ebb and maybe go the other way?

Or is or is some of these market shifts that we've seen, are they more permanent? Yeah, you know, that's the question everybody is really asking and interested in. We expect that, you know, a good chunk of this new digital behavior will probably stick around. Is consumers are finding out that you know, the convenience of online ordering and either having it delivered to their home or being able to pick up in the store. Um, even through contactlets

delivery is just become so convenient for them. It will probably bounce back, and you know, people will be doing a lot offline as soon as they can and as soon as they feel safe and comfortable doing that. But um, you know, we we've continued to see this digital increase, certainly during the holidays, for example, a good thirteen to fifteen percent a year this year is really like two years of growth packed into a single year um and that's really going to be hard for people to to

step away from, even when they can. So that kind of goes to the question, you know, when you talk about retail, when you ever you have a discussion, maybe even with the last decade or so, it comes to the question of to what extent is the US retail

footprint overstored? And then when you get you know, a period that we're going through right now where we're seeing um so many people going over to e commerce, it kind of brings that question to the four Yet again, what's your thought about that as you look at the

US retail landscape. Yeah, I think this year has really shown that, I don't know, it's so much about being overstored, but certainly maybe under digital if you want um And and that's one of the things that we see a lot of businesses pushing into accelerating the digital transformations this year. Retail as well as other sectors of the economy really

pushing hard into digital. And as that happens, we expect to see even more kind of fundamental disruptions to the way you know, business models work, and if you're not in a digital channel, it's going to be really, really difficult. So John, give us a sense of what's hot this

holiday season from a product perspective, and maybe what's not. Yeah, so one of the well instead of the what's not, I can I can definitely tell you, for example, the electronic game platforms you know, PS five, Xbox and and all of the games that go with them. So NBA two K one, Madden, NFL twenty one. Just it's really hot right now. Um. In terms of toys more generally, Star Wars toys are really big. Nerve is really big

right now. Control right, Um, we expect to see a lot with you know, even still continuing successes of like L O L Surprise UH and hatch Amoles will continue to be strong this holiday season. So John, you know, we saw in the beginning of the pandemic some of these retailers, pair of retailers fought for bankruptcy. Ever, we can see more of that. That's really tough to say.

I think as as retailers are figuring out how to make digital work, and they're pushing harder to get more sales through their Hopefully that will tide them over while the economy, you know, begins to get back to normal as we start to see you know, light at the end of the tunnel and the vaccines become available and hopefully, you know, things can begin to turn around in it. John, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciated. We

know you're busy this time of the year. John Copeland, VP of Marketing and Customer Insights at Adobe, based in San Jose, California. You know, generally a what we're hearing here is retail sales here during US a Black Friday, Cyber Monday, generally pretty healthy when given everything that we are dealing with. So there's that for the consumer. Let's switch gears right now and talk about commodities, particularly UH crude oil. And there's really no one better to do

that with than Ellen Walled, President of Transversal Consulting. She is also Bloomberg Opinion contributor. So Ellen, love to talk to you about OPEK. What do you expect for their upcoming meeting? Here, I'm looking at w t I cruded at forty five dollars seems kind of range bound here.

What are you looking for? Yeah, so thank you. We're looking for at this point, we're not looking for any big resolution, and today it seems like the OPEC group is going to push that off until tomorrow when larger OPAQ plus group including Russia meets, But the expectation is that they are going to have agreed to extend their current quotas for another three months, so into the first

quarter of one, and that will be a change. Right now, they're actually scheduled to increase production by two million barrels per day come January one. And it's interesting because oil has trended upwards uh recently, mostly on positive vaccine news, but there are a lot of fears in terms of demand.

There's really a lot of demand weakness in Europe and the United States that doesn't look like it's going to resolve itself anytime soon, and so there's a lot of fears that if OPEC doesn't come through with this three month extension, that um, we could be seeing an end to this oil rally. Yeah, it's inter I'm glad you brought up kind of kind of where the oil is

trading here. You take a look at the equa markets for example, and there you know, as in the month of November all time highs, tremendous records for performance within a month. A lot of that based upon the expectations that the vaccines in fact are coming, the economies will in fact open up next year, and you need to make your bets today. Are you surprised that oil hasn't traded better. I'm not deprised that oil hasn't traded better.

I'm actually surprised that that this rally has been sustained for as long as it has, because the fundamentals are really not very good when you're looking at demand and also when you're looking at supply. We've got libbyan oil production coming back on the market, and so that's adding could add another million barrels a day, regardless of what

Opaque decides. So we've got lagging demand. These vaccines aren't really going to be uh, you know, in the general available to people all over the world until well into so I think oil is really looking at um kind of a shorter term than the markets are. But so it's interesting that the rally we saw around the initial vaccine news has been maintained, and it does seem like it's up to opeque a bit to keep or sustain

or kind of put a floor on oil prices. So, Ellen, what do you think or what's what are you hearing from the folks you talk to in the global energy space? What does a Biden administration mean and what does it mean for kind of global oil supply? How do you think about that? Yeah, this is this is a big

question on everyone's mind. It definitely means more support for alternative energies, But the big question is what does it mean for US production because that's really been a game changer in the oil industry over the past few years. Right now, the US has backed off of its production highs, but that really was was expected even before the COVID nineteen pandemic kind of demolished a lot of production in uh the shale industry. But I think what we're looking

at our further consolidation in the shale oil industry. There are big companies out there that are doing production, and I think they will fare fairly well under a Biden administration because a lot of the new regulations that he's looking at will actually be beneficial to them and will help keep smaller producers from really getting into the game.

But what about shale in general. Here it seems like it's been, as you mentioned, kind of real game changer for global supply as the US has become an actually a net exporter. Here is the expectation that the best days of the U s shell patch are in the rear view mirror. I do think that they the production heydays are definitely in the rear view mirror. But remember that it was actually under the Obama administration that the us UH finally ended the oil export ban and became

a player in the global oil market. So I don't think we're looking to see a reversal of that in any case. I do think the big question, though, is what's going to happen with China. Because the Trump administrations to succeed in getting China to agree to purchase a fairly large amount of oil and energy products from the United States. They haven't quite followed through on that, but they have made a very significant um mark towards that goal.

And so I think that everyone is going to be really wondering where's the Biden administration going to go with this. Are we going to to see more? Is he gonna hold China to this promise or is that kind of out of the window. So as it relates to China, Ellen, we've seen them, you know, whether the pandemic. They are on the other side of of the pandemic. We're starting to see the economy put up some decent growth numbers as the economy opens up. Have we seen that in

the global energy markets? Have the Chinese been stepping up their purchases on the global crude market? Yeah? Absolutely, China is really I think where a lot in China is where a lot of the big um national oil producers, Saudi Arabia, you are really focusing their attention because um, they issued new quotas for the independent refineries, So that means that those refineries are going to be drawing down oil stocks, They're going to be taking in more crude oil, refining,

making more products and shipping that out. And um, they're really looking at China to kind of be a bright spot in the oil demand picture. So where where do we see that, Like, do we see that in just the price of oil? Do we track shipments? And if we track shipments, do we track them from certain suppliers?

How how do you track that? Yeah, so we definitely look at um at loadings that go to Asia to China and how that's going, but also the number of ships that are actually sitting waiting UH in ports in Asia to unload their product. Sometimes that can be really backed up when um, you know, when refineries aren't taking are aren't taking coil in and so as we see those stocks decline, that's an education and then usually oil prices do respond when we get word that these uh

these ships are actually onloading their oil. Hey, Ellen, thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate that. At interesting times in the global energy space. Ellen Wild, president of Transversal Consulting and a Bloomberg Opinion contributor, we appreciate her thoughts. As always, we've been hearing from the good folks like Dave Wilson Sarah Ponza this morning about what a record setting month it was for equity markets in the month

of November. That's all well and good, but the cynic in me says, Okay, now what do I do well? Matt MAILEI chief market strategists at Miller Tebeck, and I found over the mail report. Hopefully he'll have some answers for me. So, Matt, We've had an extraordinary run here in November, driven in large part by some really positive news on the vaccine front, and we had some more good news today. Um, what is your thought for the remainder of the year heading into one, given that whether's

pandemic numbers are just getting worse and worse. Yeah, I mean that's certainly something to be concerned about, no question. I'm actually more a little bit more concerned about it next year than I am this year. And from the main the main reason, Well, first of all, today's pull back is no big surprise. I mean, we've had this great run and I mean especially the Russell two thousand, I mean as up over UH in just a month.

So the fact that it's down in almost about percent and a half today is not a big deal and needs to digest those gains in the overall market and may have to do that for a couple of days. But the liquidity situation is still very strong, and it's kind of weird. I mean what we went back whatever is six or eight years ago and people were talking about, hey, you know if the if, if the economy starts to slow down, the FED will add more stimulus or do more QUI so we don't have to worry if the

economy does better well, that's good. We don't have to worry about that. So it was kind of a win win. Now we're looking at that with and it's oddly as it sounds, the virus UH and the lockdowns that are going with it, and the concerns about the slowing growth will I believe ENTI see the FED to keep their liquidity spick. It's wide open through the end of the year and into the early next year. Uh, much like

they did last year. For a very different reason. They did it last year because if we had remember we had the big repot problem in the fall of last year, and they needed to keep the liquidity speakers open then. But I think both will lead into a very similar

year continued here in rally. So, Matt, what we've certainly see, not just in the month in November, but really since you know our September ish or so, is that that rotation trade people kind of lightening up a little bit, some of those tried and true big tech names, whether it's an Amazon or an Apple uh, and kind of rotating into the names that will benefit with the rebounding the economy. Presumably sometime in cyclical small caps so on and so forth. So is that a trade you like.

If so, do you still like it here? Heading into I do, but maybe not as much as I think a lot of people are. And the reason for this is is that I think a lot of people seem to be wanting to throw the baby out with the

bathwater when it comes to tech. I certainly understand why. Technically, some of these technology stocks that megacap names, um, you know, without that kind of you know, with the vaccine and such, we're not saying, well, Jesus, lockdown, stay at home is gonna stay, is gonna stay with us for a long time. So I'm not gonna be willing to pay the huge valuations for these megacap names. But boy, the some of the you know, especially the chip stocks, they act very

very well, making new highs. You have other stocks away from a check to sorry the chip names, like a Cgate Technologies, Western Digital, things like that. So my point is tech is not dead by any minute, specially the imagination. So do some rotating into value, but also do some rotating within technology. I think that will bode well as we go into into next year. Um, you know, I'll bring up the dreaded E word energy. We've got w

t I credit forty five dollars a barrel um. One could argue that if the economy is primed to open up on a global scale sometime mid next year, as these vaccines become more widely available, that perhaps that bodes well for the energy infrastructure, and it's certainly been beaten down over the last several years. Is that a sector you have some courage for I do? I mean, obviously it's had a huge run here over the last you know to really two months now, uh, particularly in the

last month, but also really for two months. And the x l E which is the energy E t F, and of course the XOP which also includes some of the uh uh sorry uh drilling names. But the point is that they are overbought. They could pull back a little bit over a near term, but they're also still

very cheap. And you think about rotation, I mean, people are gonna need is if this group moves up, especially institutional players, they're gonna they they are so underweight this group as it rallies, especially into the new year, if they're very underweighted, they're gonna have to rewait their their their holdings. But more importantly, on a fundamental basis, the last time oil UH, the the x l E, and the x OP we're trading at these levels. Oil was

at thirty two dollars. Now it's at forty five, even if it comes in a little bit still chief to their underlying UH commodity. So I think this is a group that on both a rewaiting play UH and on a fundamental basis, is going to do a lot better than a lot of people think. And if oil can hold up in the mid forties, it doesn't have to take off, but it holds up in the in the mid forties, and especially if it rallies more, it's really gonna move because the institutions have to pile into the group.

So I'm a lot more bullish on this group than a lot of other people who need to be careful and not saying jump in like you went to tech group. But it's it's a nice play. You have just about thirty seconds Banks, Big Banks here again another unloved group. Is it time to take a look at them on in the anticipation of a better one. Well, it's, you know, again the very cheap group. So it's I think it's a good play that the key is what's going to

happen in interest rates. To me, to be honest with you, for short term traders, I think this thing can to continue to rally because I think rates will hold up and I think the YO curve will continue to steep in. But as we move in the next year and we get to some of the I think we get a little bit less stimulant send a lot of people are hoping for from both the Fed and the and the Congress. UH that will cause those banks to take a little

bit of hiccup. So long term players that want to be a little careful short term traders, I think you can ride the way for for a couple more months. Matt Manley, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Matt Mailey, chief market strategist at Miller Tabeck and founder of the Mainly Report. There's time for Bloomberg Opinion. We're joined today by Chris Hughes, Deals columnists for Bloomberg Opinion and what deal you may ask, Well, it is

merger Monday, and we've got a big one. SMP Global, the data company buying another data company I h S Market for about thirty nine billion dollars in Chris, Thanks so much for joining us here. This is a big deal. Tell us about this deal. What's kind of the strategy be putting these two big global data players together? And I should note before you go on that Bloomberg LP does compete both against SMP UH and I h S market. So, Chris, what do you think is real drivers behind this this deal?

I think it's it's for two or three things. I mean, one is that this industry is consolidating. We've already seen some quite interesting combinations already, So think about the combination of London Stock Exchange UH and Refinitive UH and UM. So there have been deals happening already, so that the trend is towards insolidation. And then if you think about what this combination does, it brings together the SMP brand which is very strong, with I h S is other

data services. So you end up with a combination which has got more offer, more to offer and to more customers, so you can cross fairly offering between the two customer bases UM and with that scale you've become a much stronger company, and then presumingly you can do more deals after that. It's interesting, you know, I've when I was a research channel. So I spent some time looking at this industry and for a long time, uh, it was a very sleepy industry. Investors didn't pay much attention to it.

There wasn't a lot of value assigned to it. But it just seems like in the last decade, as you mentioned, there's been a lot of consolidation. It's really taken off. And the valuations we're seeing here just extraordinary. What are some of the new businesses that these companies are generating off of their UM this this data that they have in the analytics that they have and Y scale might be important. There's a whole plethora of new products. I mean one of them, of course is in Y s

G environmental, social and governance research and analytics. And you know, we saw a deal UM the other day in Europe with Deutsche Burza and I S S. So uh, there is a whole array of new data points. If you think about where UH, I H S markets started off, where markets started off, UM, you know, way about when it was really just looking at UM. You know, TRID is in the credit market and that has obviously now become a much much bigger business. Now. Who say the

valuations put on these companies are much bigger. As it happens. Actually, these two UM has seen their valuations converge, so they're they're emerging from a point of parity. But the increase both in the in the evaluation multiples and the and the and the site of these companies has been quite tremendous over the last few years. So, Chris, it seems like you know you you mentioned that there's been a lot of consolidation in this space, so fewer and fewer players.

It suggests to me that the regulatory risk here is not insubstantial. UM. What's what's the view on the street. Yeah, Like, I think that I think that you have to play that into consideration because you know that the sheer size of this combination, complexity of it does is going to attract regulatory scrutiny, and that in turn, obviously will adds time and uncertainty to whether it actually completes. Now the

market is giving a cautious welcome to the combination. With the other possible risk, obviously, is of a counter bid for I H S markets. So on the one hand, regulators we want to have a look, but on the other hand, maybe alternative transactions may emerge, especially as the price being paid for I S, even though it's a big number of around about four billion on a debt free basis, is actually quite a low premium on where

I was trading last week. So that could be in an invitation to somebody to come in and try and break it up. So there are indeed quite a few uncertainties around whether this will actually go from announcement to to full completion. So, Chris, if I'm an M and a banker in the space, am I just dialing for dollars here today telling all my clients, Hey, this industry you need to get bigger or you to get out.

You expect to see even more deals. Are there more to be done or is this Are we coming towards the kind of the later innings of consolidating the global data business. I think you're probably closer to the mark um with a former than the latter. Even though we are now seeing the emergence of some really really large players, it doesn't feel like you know this is completely done yet.

And as you say, if you if you pass on the consolidation, the risk is that you end up being or are the small local player and you don't really get that scale that enables you to go truly global, and I think that that might be what we're seeing in Europe actually, where you know, Europe hasn't really seen truly global scale operator in this in this industry emerge.

How far does it go? Well, if you think about the naturally deals that them and going on, hey, we've seen more and more diversifications, so deals that it would have raised an eye you just thought, well, that's not not a logical combination. Now pere logical in terms of just offering more and more by specification and great variety

of data to a larger pool of end customers. Seems to be what is driving dealmakers and CEOs in the space, which means that you could easily see combinations, certainly among the exchanges. I mean you think about intercomplinental exchange. It will be very interesting to see how they react to this combination. So I don't think we're in any way done yet. Hey, Chris Hughes, thank you so much for

joining us here. Christie's Bloomberg Opinion Deals column is talking about the S and p I h S deal again, a huge deal on that data analytic space enterprise value forty four billion dollars. Just an extraordinary kind of multiples there that we're seeing and we should know that. Again, Bloomberg LP compete. It's with both S and P as well as I H S market in the global data and analytics business. But again it looks like more consolidation

in that space. Data becoming more and more valuable going forward in a digital world, and it seems to be like a lot of markets, it's all about scale. Thanks for listening to Boomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Bonnie Quinn. I'm on Twitter at Bonnie Quinn, and I'm Paul Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio