Black Friday shopping holiday off to a slower start, but Cyber Monday ahead of Monday

Early reports on Friday suggested the shopping holiday was off to a slower than normal start, but retail investors are hopeful that sales will pick up over the weekend ahead of Cyber Monday next week.

Early In-Store Traffic Reports: Bloomberg reported calm and quiet stores at Target Corporation TGT location in Chicago and Macy's Inc M in Stamford, Connecticut on Friday morning despite a report from Salesforce Inc CRM that the average Thanksgiving Day retail discount was 31%, 7% larger than a year ago.

Related link: Amazon To Face Protests, Strikes In 40 Countries During Black Friday Sales

Holiday shoppers spent $5.29 billion on Thanksgiving Day, a record increase from a year ago, according to Adobe Inc. ADBE, up 2.9% from a year ago. Mobile sales were 55% of total online sales on Thursday, up 8.3% from a year ago.

Adobe has projected $9 billion in online sales on Friday, up just 1% from a year ago. For the five-day Cyber Week shopping holiday that runs from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, Adobe projects $34.8 billion in online spending, up 2.8% year-over-year.

Adobe estimates that shoppers have spent $77.74 billion in the month of November.

On Friday, Visa Inc V reported its November U.S. payments volume was up 9% from a year ago, suggesting consumers have been resilient this holiday season despite inflation and economic uncertainty.

Patient Shoppers: Anecdotal reports of slower than normal Black Friday foot traffic at department stores may not necessarily be a red flag for retail investors. Analysts at Cowen said on Friday that shoppers may delay their holiday spending this year as they take a wait-and- see approach in hopes that prices will fall even further as Christmas approaches.

Retail stocks were mixed on Friday in a holiday-shortened session on Wall Street. Here's how some popular retail tickers finished the trading day:

Nordstrom Inc was up 2%.

The winners and losers of this year's Cyber Week will be determined by Monday and Tuesday of next week, according to Benzinga's take. Davidson urged investors to take a cautious approach to retail stocks, as the retail sector almost always underperforms the broad market from Thanksgiving Day to the end of the year.