Black Friday vs. Black Monday
November 28, 2008 by Lela Davidson
Filed under Finance
Are you ready to go shopping? Retailers are ready for you to hit the shops. The day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, which is a very good thing in the retail trade. Black Monday, however, was a very bad day. So how’d these two special money days get their names?
Black Monday = Bad
The original financial Black Monday was October 28th, 1929. Although Wall Street had begun its free fall on the prior Thursday, but it was Monday’s disastrous losses that resulted in widespread panic at the onset of the Great Depression. In 1987, history repeated itself on October 19th, up to that point the second largest one-day stock market losses. Then came 2008. On September 29th, American markets lost approximately $1.2 trillion.
With all this bad, black news, why is Black Friday a good thing?
Black Friday = Good
Any given Friday is bound to be better than a Monday, but Black Friday is special. Black Friday is the first shopping day after Thanksgiving and is generally accepted as beginning of the Christmas season. Retailers use the term in reference to the beginning of the period in which retailers are turn a profit. Black refers to the ink used in old fashioned adding machines to indicate a positive balance. When a business is doing well, they are said to be ‘in the black’. (And vice versa, losses put you ‘in the red’ – in that is.)
While Black Friday may be the busiest shopping day of the year in terms of traffic, it may not be the highest sales day of the year, being beat out most years by the Saturday before Christmas.
Bottom line: No black Friday, no retailer!
