The only tabulations that are finding widespread approval thesedays are this weekend's receipts from retailers across the country.Stockholders are pleased as well as retail, including the recentlyshaky 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 pointsthis Black Friday. While the Nasdaq is down 29% overall this yearand the Dow and S&P are both off close to 10% each, the earlyfigures for retail following Thanksgiving helped boost prices.

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

The reports seem to be good from all manner of retailersthroughout the city and the nation. Many analysts caution thatThanksgiving weekend cannot guarantee a healthy holiday season, andprior to this weekend, Dan Barry, chief retail economist forMerrill Lynch, was predicting the worst holiday season since 1995with only a 2.5% rise in spending. Many still caution that theimpact of high heating bills, a hotly contested presidentialelection that will go on despite Bush's victory speech Sundaynight, sluggish sales of the last few months and stiff competitionbetween established bricks and mortar and the crowded e-tail worldhave not yet been determined.