That in mind as we give you a look here at futures. We are looking for an up open at the open. European markets have been open and well give you a quick look there in terms of performance. You can see mixed bag with germanys dak down ever so slightly. Theres the 10year 2. 37, the story since the election. Theres a look at crude and brent as well. Lets get to our road map this morning. Black friday is upon us, but is it actually worth going shopping today . Were going to get you up to speed. And speaking of retail, well talk to the ceo of target, that companys plan to accommodate shoppers in store and online during the busiest time of the year. And president elect donald trump couldnt quite resist tweeting on thanksgiving day. His plans to keep that carrier airconditioning plant in the United States. That is the latest on his Transition Team all coming up. Ceos of major retail chains weighing in already on black friday. Heres what macys Terry Lundgren said earlier on squawk box. On a value day like today theyre going to buy. Theyre not going to wonder and wait, will it be there tomorrow, will it be there when i buy it online the next day. So here its clearly an urgent response and reaction. So thats why theyre here buying. But that combination of using technology and the experience of being inside the store is the way consumers are shopping today and will continue to be so in the future. Were going to have a live interview later this morning with targets Ceo Brian Cornell. That will be towards the end of this hour. Of course you may see a lot of the target pageantry and signage behind us. Theyre sponsoring a little bit of a holiday spectacular right here at the nyse this morning. Yeah, hell be ringing the bell. The mood is upbeat, wouldnt you say . We saw that in the Consumer Confidence numbers that we got in the end of i guess we got it on wednesday before the holiday. And theres High Expectations for consumers to come out and spend. Whether its the election being behind us or this feeling that were getting in the stock market that we are on the brink of a lift in the overall economy, the mood is more cheerful. Thats why the anecdotal reports are so important that we take you to all the malls across the country and look at the Online Shopping action. Certainly the stocks have told that story. Department stores, which have been so hammered. Had a nice move. One of the top three best performing sub sectors in the s p in the last month since the election. You have to leave that for santoli to talk about. I was trying to set him up. The s p index since close on election day is up 12 . Kohls, macys up more than 20 a piece. Best buy has also been a leader. So i think everything about this postelection rally you have to connect to the context of where we were going into it, which was relatively down beat mood, people not being sure they were going to be coming out shopping. And then we see october data was okay. And now the optimism that in fact we get a little bit of pentup demand released into the economy. I wonder how much is spending and how much, david, is the fact they could see lower Corporate Tax rates, they pay high taxes, like a lot of corporations. The fact that consumers will spend more and weighing that against what you could see more tariffs if donald trump, president elect, follows through with some of his threats he made on the campaign trail. Particularly as it relates to china. Although, sara, theres plenty of articles today when you pick the newspaper up about the deals having already been in place for black friday for some time, the sales started early and seems to be an expectation that traffic in the actual stores may not equal what weve seen in the past. Certainly so much more gets done online, not just on what we like to call or they like to call cyber monday, but as early today. When you look at target, for example, well talk to them later, their Digital Sales up 26 last quarter. One would expect that kind of a trend to continue. Right. Because they have to get the chunk of Digital Sales versus overall sales much higher. Its still less than 5 of their total sales. Right. Growing fast off a small base. Thats what they have to keep doing. Thats why weve seen such aggressive moves from walmart and target online. Thats going to be the interesting story, whether theyre able to make a dent in what has been amazons very dominant market share when it comes to Online Shopping. Yeah. All right, well, lets get back to brick and mortar here. For more on the action today lets go to Courtney Reagan, shes live from dayton, ohio. Good morning, courtney. Reporter hi, good morning to you, david. Welcome to black friday. Its my favorite day of the year though if im honest it really did start yesterday. So those thanksgiving hours and Online Shopping has really changed the cadence of the Holiday Shopping weekend. You cant necessarily see in person what goes on online like you can in the stores, but let me tell you the early signs are bullish. Still jll which is a shopping manager says ten of its Shopping Centers around the country that have been Holding Thanksgiving hours say that the traffic is moderate to strong. 90 of them are seeing that either on par with last year, if not a little bit stronger. And 60 of those jll managed Shopping Centers say sales are on par with last thanksgiving. Now, the traffic rush at the Big Box Stores like target really does come on thanksgiving night. You can see here the difference at the target store in jersey city between last night and then just an hour ago. Still Ceo Brian Cornell is calling what he saw strong and also target. Com recorded a record day. In fact, its best day ever online. Walmart also said that thanksgiving day is one of its biggest Online Shopping days again this year. And amazon says that so far on black friday items ordered are already on track to beat what amazon did on this day last year. So the alexa devices and amazon tv fire 6 are among the best selling products, but so too are things like a certain crock pot as well as that hasbro pie face game and some headphones. So really a wide array of products there. And adobe says that for the entire day on thanksgiving sales are expected to hit about 2 billion online. And thats even with really deep discounts on products, much deeper even than last year in some cases. Tablets, for instance, are on average 25 off. Thats double the discounthat tablets saw last year. So retailers must be selling more volume to make up the sales difference. Adobe also expects that online sales will hit 3 billion today on black friday for the first time. And if that happens, that will be an 11 increase over last year. David, back to you. All right. Thank you very much, Courtney Reagan. Did want to also move of course back to politics. The transition continuing for president elect trump who kept things quite busy, it would seem, even as the thanksgiving holiday carried on. One thing in particular as you take a look at some pictures was an update that the president elect gave us via tweet on his efforts to try to keep the Carrier Corporation in indiana in terms of a factory there. You may recall this was a big issue on the campaign trail. This factory to be moving to mexico. He tweeted, im working hard even on thanksgiving trying to get carrier a. C. Company to stay in the u. S. Making progress. Will know soon. Were talking about 1,400 jobs. I can give you a little more insight after speaking to people close to the situation. It does appear the two sides are making progress as the president elect tweeted. And moving towards a deal. It doesnt mean a deal is going to be done. It is not yet done. But you can imagine from the perspective of United Technology, which owns carrier, not wanting to start off with the president in a particularly bad place. And so with this much pressure being brought to bare and the profile being given to these 1,400 jobs, the question is can you negotiate something that will give president elect trump a socalled win at the same time not really bringing too much problem for utx. The financial ramifications of this, mike, are not really that large when you think about the overall totality of the relationship between an enormous company like utx and the u. S. Government. Yeah, so essentially what youre talking about youre not talking about the federal government or executive branch being able to grant tax relief, anything on the ground tangible thats going to make it less expensive to operate this factory in indiana. Its really just about job owning. But when youre the president and not a candidate, job owning presumably takes on more power. Hes not even the president. Hes already making deals before he takes office. Hes trying to make a deal. Well see if he can make one. I should add while president elect trump is tweeting negotiations im told really being handled by Vice President elect pence, you might imagine that is the case given he was the governor of indiana where this plant is based. I want to bring in phil lebeau for a little more on where things stand here. Reporter david, whats interesting is im listening to your reporting is the question of what nuts and bolts. Lets get down to the dollars and cents in terms of what might change for United Technologies to keep that carrier plant in indianapolis. Because at the end of the day theyve made it very clear that in order to stay competitive with other manufacturers of furnaces and air conditioners, they need to be lower on their labor costs. Well, you cant do that if youre staying in indianapolis. So what could be offered to carrier . Again, we dont know for sure but a couple possibilities out there is the Trump Administration saying, look, if you keep those jobs and you keep that plant in indianapolis, were going to make it more competitive because those who are importing, lets say industrial size airconditioning units, were going to make it more expensive for them. Now, thats just a possibility. A conjecture on my part. Do you throw out a tariff as a possibility for United Technology saying if you keep that plant there, if you keep manufacturing in the u. S. , your competitors are going to have a tougher time being able to bring in their products at the prices that theyre bringing them in right now. Because as you guys also mentioned, in terms of tax relief, if youre able to weigh on the state of indiana or indianapolis, youre really going to have to involve those governments and whether or not the white house can bring enough pressure on them to offer some kind of sweeteners to keep utc in indianapolis. Certainly theres that possibility. But i think the most interesting thing is does this possibility of tariffs coming into the discussion has that been approached in these discussions yet . Yeah, well, im told that there may be sort of broad outlines for a deal, phil. I dont know that we have the specifics or that they are there yet in terms of the specifics that you sort of bring up. Reporter right. Interesting to note, Vice President elect of course was replaced by another republican as governor. One would anticipate theres a strong line of communication there, to your point, that at least would enable them to get involved on the state level if necessary. Reporter yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is, david, United Technologies has received tax benefits, as all large corporations do, over time with their facilities in different areas, municipalities. So there have been some incentives, some sweeteners put in to United Technologies over time with that plant in indianapolis. But at the end of the day it comes down to those labor costs. And i think thats going to be the real interesting thing to see what comes out of this. Yeah. And well be watching. And of course bring you any updates as certainly as we get them. Thank you, phil. I want to bring in eamon javers as well whos in philadelphia of course, bring us uptodate on other moves in the transition that continues. Eamon. Reporter thats right, david. As im listening to your reporting on carrier, i think mike makes a really good point there, which is that any president doesnt really have particular powers that they can use to force carrier to stay in the United States. They dont have a dial in the oval office that turns companies in and out of the United States. All he has really is the power of persuasion here in what they used to call the bully pulpit. And now theyve got the bully twitter account, which donald trump has been using to great effect here. So the question is whether or not this company and then other companies down the line will decide that they cant take the pain, the sting of that twitter account, and decide that its worth suffering some financial hit in order to get out of the political cross hairs here. That seems to be the calculus that carriers going to make. And you wonder what the implication then is for other companies that donald trump has gone after over the past year or so out on the campaign trail, im particularly thinking about amazon here. Thats a company that donald trump said would have some difficulties if he was elected president. Well see whether he wields that twitter account to put pressure on individual companies as we go along here. Carrier may just be the first one in line. And Steve Liesman asked a good question in the last hour, is there any precedent for this . Have we seen companies sort of badgered by the federal government before . I cant really think of an exact analog to this, but i do recall during the financial crisis all those big banks being brought in and told that they had to take t. A. R. P. Money whether they wanted it or not. That was for the good of the economy and going to have to take some financial pain or a deal they didnt like in order to help the overall u. S. Economy. Maybe a similar deal here, david, in terms of carrier, youre going to have to take this financial pain in order to help the u. S. Economy because the president wants you to. Interesting, we were looking at some video there, eamon. Number one i guess for commerce, which would sort of fall into this general area as well. Reporter yeah, thats right. The question is what would his agenda be as he comes in. The president here is going to have a lot of leeway. Companies havent seen this before and they havent seen this sort of very pointed tweeting by a president elect or a president of the United States. This is a new world. Were going to see how it unfolds. Yeah, the bully twitter pulpit. I like that, eamon, thank you. Reporter you bet. Another one were going to be watching is apple, that relationship. We know tim cook and president elect did talk. He did go after apple for not having as much jobs and manufacturing in the u. S. Thats the biggest of all. It is. When we come back, who better to talk about black friday and the Holiday Shopping season than targets Ceo Brian Cornell. Hell be joining us live here at post nine after he rings the opening bell. And taking another look here at the futures market, looks like were going to open strong. Keep in mind stocks close early today 1 00 p. M. Eastern, but we could be looking at more record highs. Much more squawk on the street live from post nine at the nyse when we come right back. The infamous traitor. And i know a thing or two about trading. So i trade with e trade, where true traders trade on a trademarked trade platform that has all the. 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And are offering discounts that are deeper than last year. And as we know the consumer is addicted to the deal. Whether that will continue into december and retailers will