Shopping Season Improves Slightly

Last year's holiday shopping season was a disaster. That said, this year's was a little better, according to preliminary numbers.

Retail sales from November through December 24 rose 3.6 percent, MasterCard's Spending Pulse unit reports. Much of that increase was attributed to an extra shopping day between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Without that day, the increase would have been more like 1 percent.

The number doesn't include gasoline or automobiles.

"I'd call it a good season because profits will be good," Maggie Gilliam, president of Gilliam & Co., a retail research firm, told the Wall Street Journal.

And it's sure better than last year, when the economy was in a tailspin and sales fell 2.3 percent.

“When you think of last year, the country really was in a free-fall mode,” Michael McNamara, vice president for research and analysis at Spending Pulse, tells the New York Times. “This year a lot of these numbers are generally stable to mildly positive, which is a step in the right direction.”

In January, we'll know more. That's when major chain stores will report December sales figures.

And one thing is certain, those chains are wasting no time trying to clear leftover inventory, as Portfolio.com reported over the weekend. Price cuts were widespread and deep on the day after Christmas.