Morning Brew Daily
Black Friday Hits $11B in Sales & Australia Bans Social Media for Kids Under 16
Mon, 02 Dec 2024
Episode 465: Neal and Toby recap the long holiday weekend with Black Friday sales reaching $10.8B thanks to online shopping. Then, Australia became the first country to fully ban social media for children under the age of 16. Next, Trump issues a warning to BRICS nations if they don’t commit to the US dollar. Plus, Coffee futures reach a new high. Meanwhile, the buyer of the $6.2M banana wants to buy more bananas, but the kind gesture lands with a thud. Also, the stock market and “Moana 2” are the weekend’s winners. Lastly, news you need to know for the week ahead. Download the Yahoo! Finance App (on the Play and App store) for real-time alerts on news and insights tailored to your portfolio and stock watchlists. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - 'Whamageddon' 03:45 - Black Friday Sales 06:50 - Australia Social Media Ban 10:00 - Trump Tariffs and BRICS Nations 12:45 - Coffee Prices Increase 15:25 - Banana Art Update 19:50 - Winners of the Weekend 25:45 - Week ahead Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the significance of Black Friday sales this year?
Good morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, what are BRICS countries and why do they want to move off the U.S.
dollar? Then Black Friday shopping numbers are in and it looks like we all needed a little retail therapy this year. It's Monday, December 2nd. Let's ride.
We are so back. Welcome, everyone, to the best stretch of the year, that time between Thanksgiving and Christmas with all the lights, holiday markets, nutmeg smells, and music. And speaking of music, I just want to say good luck to everyone participating in Whamageddon. If you haven't heard of this, it's an annual challenge in which players try to avoid hearing Last Christmas by Wham!
Chapter 2: Why did Australia ban social media for kids under 16?
from December 1st, yesterday, through Christmas Eve. Toby, this seems impossible.
It seems impossible, but let's get into some specifics. There is an official Wham-A-Get in sight, and it lays out some rules you need to follow. The first two are just the objective of the game, and then two, the time frame of the game, as you mentioned, December 1st through the 24th. But the third rule is the most important.
You are allowed to listen to covers and remixes, so it only applies to the original version of Last Christmas by Wham that will make you lose. And Neil, I know you have done some digging into the best covers of this song. What are some different versions people could listen to to get their last Christmas fix without losing the game?
Yeah, to be honest, they don't hold a candle to the original. But if you need to listen to this song but still want to compete in the challenge, there are plenty of covers out there by Jimmy Eat World, Hilary Duff, Carly Rae Jepsen, and the cast of Glee. There's also one by Taylor Swift.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of Trump's tariffs on BRICS nations?
Oh, my gosh. I already lost this year's Ram again in challenge by just going to a department store. So definitely avoid the Nordstrom's in the Macy's of the world if you want to win. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance.
Neil, how was the long weekend? Oh, you know, full of interesting side dishes and family time and some good dinner table conversations.
Chapter 4: How are coffee prices affecting consumers?
Same here, but those dinner table convos can get a little dicey around this time of year. Luckily, I have a pretty finance-focused family, so a lot of our conversations revolved around the market. I'd love to hear a Howell family market breakdown. Honestly, it was mostly just, so is NVIDIA going to go up forever?
But while I'm not the guy to give financial advice, I did recommend that they all check out Yahoo Finance. It's got way more information than I could ever dole out over a side of mashed potatoes.
from experts. Talking about Yahoo Finance over Thanksgiving meals. Now that is a company man right there.
Chapter 5: What is the latest update on banana art?
Hey, Yahoo is what I use, so I want the fam to be armed with the best data possible as well.
That's just being considerate. If you want to be like Toby's family, which who wouldn't, head to YahooFinance.com today.
3000 Action-Filialen in Europa und wir feiern mit extrem niedrigen Preisen. Zum Beispiel unsere Superfin Waschmittelpots, 18 Stück nur 2,99. Und unsere Spektrum Sprühfarbe für perfekte Deckung nur 2,33. Für noch mehr extrem niedrige Preise besuche unsere Filialen oder schau in die App Action. Kleine Preise, große Freude.
Well, hope your long weekend was restful and not too stressful. Since we were off for a few days, we're going to move our headline roundup segment up to the top of the show and run down some of the stories you might have missed while you were off in a leftover-inspired food coma. Up first, Black Friday numbers are in, and air fryers, giant TVs, makeup kits, oh my.
Chapter 6: Who were the winners of the weekend in entertainment and stocks?
Shoppers did their best supermarket sweep impressions and loaded up their shopping carts at record pace this year. Online shopping on Black Friday set a new all-time high, reaching almost $11 billion, according to Adobe Analytics. And that's on top of the $6 billion consumers shelled out on Thanksgiving Day itself. The items that drove most of the spending were your usual suspects.
Sales of jewelry were up 651% compared to an average day earlier this fall as shoppers took advantage of discounts. Appliance sales jumped 476%, while apparel and electronics were both up over 330%. A surprise winner was toys. Overall toy sales were up 622% as Harry Potter Lego sets, Wicked plush dolls, and board games were flying off shelves.
Whatever you decided to buy, you probably did buy it online. Online retail sales were up 15% this year, according to MasterCard, compared to just a 0.7% rise in in-store sales. So, Neil, this was always going to be a bit of an apprehensive time for retailers because a lot of consumers have shown themselves to be more price-sensitive this year after months and months of high inflation.
But clearly, the discounts were tasty enough to drive some pretty gaudy numbers this year.
Did you do any shopping this year? I did a little shopping. I bought a new backpack. I bought some sneakers because these are absolutely beat up. And then the most important thing, I walked into the Verizon store and I switched from Android to an iPhone. So those are the three big purchases that I made. And I wonder if anyone else saw this, but there was some interesting marketing this year.
Some retailers decided to... say that they decided to promote their sales ahead of tariffs. We know that President Trump floated tariffs on literally every good coming into this country and higher ones on Chinese goods, which many, you know, Christmas and holiday gifts are. A few companies said, you better lock in your prices now, and they called it a pre-tariff sale.
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Chapter 7: What news should we watch for in the upcoming week?
Now, I think that is walking a bit of a tightrope to see how consumers would respond to that. But that was a new added flavor this year for people's holiday shopping.
Right. It was certainly a psychological marketing tactic. Like, hey, prices are going to get even more expensive down the line, so let's bring them forward. I do want to talk about how in-store traffic did, because foot traffic actually fell on Black Friday 3.2% year over year.
But a lot of it was due to some regional aberrations because there was, as we mentioned right before we left, some pretty bad weather over this Thanksgiving weekend. The Midwest had the sharpest decline because they also had really, really cold weather, very wintry weather. Northeast also had some adverse conditions.
So whenever you do look at Black Friday sales numbers, you have to zoom out and say, hey, there's a lot more other factors involved here rather than just consumers' appetite for spending. Stuff like weather does... affect foot traffic.
So that's maybe why we saw a little bit of an impact on shoppers' decisions to venture out and go shop in stores while we saw that 15, 16% rise in actual online shopping.
Moving on, Australia made history on Friday, becoming the first country in the world to ban social media for children under 16. In passing the law, overwhelmingly, the Australian Parliament wanted to send a message to online platforms and the rest of the world that it was serious about protecting kids from the harms they face while scrolling.
One thing to know about this law, all the responsibility for enforcement rests on the platforms. If they fail to comply, they could be fined up to $32 million, while underage users and their parents will face no penalties. The ban doesn't go into effect for another 12 months.
So in the interim, social media companies are going to be scrambling to create tools that block kids under 16 in Australia from accessing their platforms. But critics of the law say those efforts will be futile and kids will find a way to get around it if they want to go on social media. Toby, we've seen crackdowns on social media used for kids in the name of safety, but never something like this.
Right.
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