MORNING COFFEE

Black Friday Shows Improvement. Holiday shoppers hit the stores with credit cards on hand on Black Friday.  Almost 212 million shoppers visited the malls or retail websites over the weekend which was an +8.7% increase from last year. Although traffic showed a nice increase retail spending only increased +0.3% over last year coming in at $10.69 billion. E-commerce rose +28% over last year.  Amazon’s (AMZN) Black Friday sales jump of +82.3%. On-line retailers should see additional increases today with “Cyber Monday” sales.

Wal-Mart To Buy Massmart. Wal-Mart (WMT) said they made a formal offer to buy a 51% stake in South Africa retailer Massmart (MMRTY) for $2.3 billion. Massmart's board recommended shareholders accept the deal.

Upgrades

American Eagle (AEO): Janney Montgomery Scott raised their rating from Neutral to Buy and placed a target price of $20.00 on the company.

Downgrades

Dollar General (DG): Avondale lowered their rating from Market Outperform to Market Perform and placed a target price of $33.00 on the company.

eBay (EBAY): Stifel Nicolaus  lowered their rating from Buy to Hold.

Coverage Reiterated/Price Target Changed

OmniVision (OVTI): Wedbush reiterated their Outperform rating and raised their target price from $28.00 to $34.00.

Boeing (BA): RBC Capital Markets reiterated their Outperform rating and lowered their target price from $80.00 to $78.00.

·         Futures at 7:00: Dow +0.2%. S&P +0.25%. Nasdaq +0.1%. Crude +0.6% to $84.27. Gold -0.2% to $1359.80.

·         Asia: Japan +0.9% to 10126. Hong Kong +1.3% to 23166. China -0.2% to 2866. India +1.4% to 19405.

·         Europe: London -0.3%. Paris -0.6%. Frankfurt -0.6%.