I'm beat today is Black Friday and I just got back from exploring retail demand first hand because I've been reading retailers earnings calls best by Target Walmart Macy's you name it to try to understand what's going on with retailers at the corporate level. but I like to understand both the office and in person. Just like my father-in-law used to say, if you want to close a deal, you do it belly to belly. Now let's talk about what I saw when I went out and how it aligns with what or doesn't align with what I heard in Earnings calls and let's talk about what this means for the Federal Reserve Now since it is Black Friday evening I want you to know a following Well, the following updates: First 60 off coupon code it's Black Friday That means it expires tonight I'm probably gonna be up for about the next 12 hours because I've got to drop the Elite Hustlers course. So after I post this, I'm gonna finish organizing the Elite Hustlers course and make sure that gets posted on time today. I Promised a good drop today. so I got two hours left and I got a big cup of coffee brewing and it's 9 47. So I guess I have actually two hours and 13 minutes. Lucky me! With that said, let's get into the content of the video. but do keep in mind if you buy those courses linked down below, you're guaranteed the best price and yet lifetime access. Honestly, if you find somebody who you think works harder than me, buy a course from them. But I highly encourage you to check out if you like real estate investing. I got something for you? Do it yourself Property Management I got something for you making YouTube videos, real estate agent, stocks and psychology money or making more money as an entrepreneur either as an employee or a new employee or a side hustle business or a main hustle business, there's something for you. All right. let's get started. Links by the way, Medkevin.com So I went to Best Buy with Jack That was my first stop and when I first went into Best Buy I saw what I had actually been hearing in multiple calls and that is that air fires are expected to be popular this season and I swear the first two people I actually saw in the line that had stuff were either carrying an air fryer or about to pick up an air fryer to get into the lime. There were a lot of lines at Best Buy and Best Buy looked packed. The parking lot was slammed but I'll tell you this people didn't really actually seem to be buying that much stuff like usually on Black Friday and I look when I was a child through teenager through when I met Lauren I was the Black Friday man I like or kid Okay, I would be the guy who would go to the midnight Black Friday I would because they didn't do Thanksgiving back then it was it was midnight. You go to the midnight Rush at the mall and everybody's slamming everybody. it's like an alley in South Korea Okay then it might be too soon. Then you you go to the 5 30 a.m sales at like BrandsMart which we're always freaking insane and then you go to the Best Buys the Comp USA, the Circuit City and all the other stores that are basically bankrupt like Block Plus Buster. Anyway, uh, it was fun, but back then people had carts full of stuff. That's when you bought everything now In Fairness, we didn't do online as much back then so that could be shaving off some of this. In fact, when I spoke with somebody outside of the Banana Republic one of the security individuals because there was a long queue of individuals trying to get inside of it, they mentioned that a lot of people were actually uh ordering online because they were either frustrated with what was going on in store or they were ordering online and then coming to pick it up in store and so they had a queue out the door because they didn't have enough staff to process all the demand. That's what I heard from Banana Republic but boy oh boy when I looked into Best Buy a little bit deeper whom of course I had Jack company with or where of course Jack accompanied me with which was super fun. It was nice to bring Jack around and tell him what I was up to and you know he was showing me his stuff that he was interested in I was showing him my stuff I was interested in and boy what I was shocked by was it was five o'clock and look at the freaking inventory. Holy smokes I don't know what they were prepared for here but these are a lot of TVs I'm gonna ask about this. this is a mad house of inventory. I'm gonna show you clip after clip after clip here of just inventory inventory inventory everywhere you look inventory and it's five o'clock So I asked one of the uh individuals who seemed like they were a manager and they said they had gone through 50 of their TVs and I looked around I Go Really? I mean your back shelves are stocked and you're still stocked out there. It's like yep, 50 sold and I'm like all right, looks like you still got some more work too. I Don't believe it. I mean sure when I got there, one person was walking out with a TV but this is an insane amount of inventory. You want computers? We got computers. You want printers. We got printers you want Alexa stuff we got Alexa stuff. There was so much crap everywhere and it it made me look at the store and I'm like this is what deflation looks like. Look at all these TVs Roku wants to get in this business Roku thinks they're going to be competitive 75-inch TV 529 dollars for a 75 incher. We are about to see the gnarliest price discounts in January my expectation I think retailers are going to go holy and pardon my French here. Okay, plug the children's ears holy. We ordered way too much crap because it's insane I mean the aisles are overflowing with stuff and I I like back in the old Black Friday days that stuff was gone by like 10 a.m like the shelves were bare back in the days. uh-uh not today. In fact I just came back and I read a Bloomberg article about this and the Bloomberg article talks about U.S Shoppers Kickoff Holiday season with a muted Black Friday U.S Retailers discounted heavily on Black Friday to clear out bloated inventory, but spending was more cautious. Many had heavy inventory, misjudging the erosion in demand by buyers. A retail consultant interviewed by Bloomberg said it's a win, but not where retailers want sales to be. Adobe indicated Thanksgiving sales were up 2.9 percent, but adjusted for inflation, that's a loss of over five percent. And when I went through the outlet malls I asked as many stores as I possibly could where I also couldn't find parking, which by the way, there weren't even that many people that I could tell that were actually actively like with bags. I mean there were some, but I thought there would have been way more people with actually bags and stuff. Nope. and so uh, when I asked that stores I go hey like why a q Why? why is there a line to get in the store I mean I even looked in some of the stores and I'm like the store doesn't look that busy. what's going on? Like let people in, let them buy and they're like we don't have the staff because people are going in, they're grabbing stuff and then they're making a mess and then we need somebody to come clean it and then we can invite more guests in because we don't want to give a bad impression. and I'm like well this ain't how we used to do Black Friday you should see how Black Friday used to be done, you know I'm starting to say I feel like I started to sound like an old person. It was like well back when you guys was below a dollar which I did that in a live stream this morning I'm like I remember guess what? it was 97 cents for a short time when I was seven years old which got that was about 23 years ago so that was like 1999. How vile to that as a Disney World am I we had just driven uh, four hours. My dad's like under a buck baby I won the lottery. We had like zero money back then. Okay, zero I mean like going to it was Disney World because it was Florida but like that was scraping paycheck to paycheck savings together. it was tough. Yeah, I'll never forget that time. that's tough. Um, all right. well Story Time can come a different time. that's gonna make me emotional anyway. so then I went to Walmart and I'm like, okay, well Walmart was bragging about sales although most of their sales were in grocery because obviously like you know Best Buy like 50 50 of Best Buy's Revenue comes from personal Computing and phones. dude the shelves are full of that crap and like I don't see people buying uh, it's crazy I mean people are looking at the washing machines I don't see anyone Wheeling them out I mean maybe they're on order, you know I don't know. uh but let me just say what I saw looked like deflation and I'm like I'll just I'll go to Walmart let's see what's going on over there. and I look at the TV aisle and they have a ton of TV stocked every year too. I mean they got Junk stacked everywhere. Uh, even in the the little Christmas aisles and stuff, they got stuff stacked and then I look and I'm like oh man, they still have all of the TV mounts stacked up on the sides. It's like nobody's buying and I'm thinking to myself like oh my gosh uh I mean unless they just want everything to look plentiful so you take it and think you're getting a good deal or something like that and this is all like a mirage. These companies have way too much stuff they can't get rid of it I Don't think they can get rid of it profitably I Think this is a red flag season for retailers I Think this is a bad situation for retailers on top of being a bad situation for retailers I think January We're going to start seeing businesses go effort. We gotta clear this inventory because otherwise it's going to stagnate and then we're going to lose and then you're gonna see a race to the bottom and that could lead to some really insane levels of Kathy Woody in style deflation coming Jan to March I Don't know if we're gonna be clear by December yet, but you know December CPI numbers are gonna pick up Black Friday discounting time. yeah and I and Cyber Monday I Would not be surprised if retailers are like holy crap Black Friday Was not good for us. Caught prices more which is actually very bullish for maybe not necessarily consumer goods stocks. Probably not very bullish for those earnings at all, but for the stock market overall, potentially quite bullish. But I think that all of the optimism about retail misplaced. Very, very misplaced. This was. this was not good what I saw, but you could see yourself I'll put the clips I Actually edited I Spent some more time editing this video actually. I'm kind of saying that as if I already did it I actually haven't actually edited the video yet because I'm still filming the video but you know by the time you watch it I'll have edited it and and I you know I'd like some compliments because usually I don't do this all right. Thanks y'all I Appreciate you happy Black Friday Met Kevin.com Join: Uh I'm probably gonna be up all night so it's gonna be a bit before we change the pricing for Black Friday uh but check out as soon as you can and um I'm gonna make it worth your while. Thanks so much for watching. we'll see the next one. goodbye. All right Jack Well you have a lesson for everybody. Go ahead. Mr Mister are not solid but they are clouded.