The only tabulations that are finding widespread approval these days are this weekend's receipts from retailers across the country. Stockholders are pleased as well as retail, including the recently shaky e-tail, stocks rose. Friday's Nasdaq closed up 149.04 points, the Dow was up 70.91 points and the S&P 500 rose 19.41 points this Black Friday. While the Nasdaq is down 29% overall this year and the Dow and S&P are both off close to 10% each, the early figures for retail following Thanksgiving helped boost prices.

Yahoo! was up Friday $2.69 per share and it reports its number of transactions doubled Friday from those recorded for the same day in 1999. Amazon.com's stocks rose $3.75 per share and even Etoys found itself on the upswing, even if only by $0.59 per share. Kmart's Bluelight.com that recently debuted doubled its gains from last weekend. Even the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi is declaring that internationally bricks and mortar retailers saw 5-6% gains in spending this past weekend over last year's Thanksgiving weekend, according to published reports.

The reports seem to be good from all manner of retailers throughout the city and the nation. Many analysts caution that Thanksgiving weekend cannot guarantee a healthy holiday season, and prior to this weekend, Dan Barry, chief retail economist for Merrill Lynch, was predicting the worst holiday season since 1995 with only a 2.5% rise in spending. Many still caution that the impact of high heating bills, a hotly contested presidential election that will go on despite Bush's victory speech Sunday night, sluggish sales of the last few months and stiff competition between established bricks and mortar and the crowded e-tail world have not yet been determined.