Stuffing wasn’t the only thing Americans overdid this Thanksgiving.

Holiday weekend spending smashed forecasts: shoppers spent $6.4 billion on Thanksgiving, $11.8 billion on Black Friday, and $14.25 billion on Cyber Monday—all record highs. At peak hours, $12.5 million flowed through online carts every minute.

Tech played a surprisingly large role this year: AI-driven traffic to US retail sites jumped 805% on Black Friday compared to last year, helping steer shoppers toward deals and boosting conversion. Total online sales hit $44.2 billion per Adobe Analytics, beating expectations.

Behind the boom

At first glance the numbers look strong, but a closer look tells a different story: Americans are spending more but walking away with less.

Revenue from online Black Friday sales rose 3%, but only because the average selling price jumped 7%, according to Salesforce. It might have seemed like everything was on sale, but average Cyber Week prices actually rose 7%, outpacing last year’s 5% climb. And Americans bought less overall on Black Friday, with shopping carts 2% smaller than they were a year earlier.

One major culprit is tariffs: The rising price of imported goods has pushed producers to pass along higher costs to customers stateside. Typically, the US leads global holiday spending growth—but this year, global Black Friday spending grew twice as fast as US sales. And Cyber Monday sales growth in the US lagged behind Europe for the first time, a reversal fueled by US tariffs and aggressive ECB rate cuts, according to Bloomberg.

What this means for the economy

All this plays out as consumers confront mounting economic anxiety. Alongside tariff-driven costs, households are facing job insecurity and stubborn inflation. Consumer spending makes up 70% of US GDP, but the foundation of the US economy is wobbling, as illustrated by the Consumer Confidence Index recently falling to its lowest level since April.

The holiday sales strength we’re seeing today may reflect a divergence between haves and have-nots, rather than broad consumer health. Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, called this season “a K-shaped economy on steroids,” with Americans earning more than $170,000 driving double-digit spending growth this year.

The question now is whether this small base of big spenders can sustain momentum through the rest of the season, and into next year.—SY

🟢 What’s up

• Intel popped 8.65% following reports that it will begin supplying chips for Apple’s MacBook Air and iPad Pro as early as 2027.
• Software company MongoDB climbed 22.23% on a Q3 beat-and-raise report, with investors cheering accelerating AI-driven demand and continued momentum from its Atlas cloud database platform.
• Aerospace manufacturer Beta Technologies rose 8.12% after Eve Air Mobility inked a 10-year deal worth up to $1 billion to buy its electric motors.
• Bayer jumped 11.97% after the Trump administration urged the US Supreme Court to take up the pharmaceutical and biotech company’s Roundup appeal, a rare boost for the firm amid years of bruising litigation.
• Boeing gained 10.15% following guidance that deliveries of both the 737 and 787 jets are expected to increase next year.
• Connectivity solution provider Credo Technology surged 10.12% on a strong fiscal Q2 and a bullish long-term forecast, with the company projecting 50% annual revenue growth and 70% earnings growth through 2028.

What’s down

• Ford slipped 1.52% as November sales declined 1% year over year, including a 10% drop in F-Series trucks and a 61% collapse in EV sales.
• Biopharmaceutical company Janux Therapeutics plunged 53.34% despite releasing positive early-stage prostate cancer trial data, as analysts cut price targets over limited data and concerns about its competitiveness against Novartis’s Pluvicto.
• Signet Jewelers fell 6.8% even though it beat Q3 earnings, with investors focusing on the company’s warning of a challenging holiday season ahead.
• XPO dropped 5.65% after the freight company reported weakening operating metrics in its North American LTL business for November.
• Biotech company MetaVia slid 20.07% following news of a 1-for-11 reverse stock split, which consolidates every 11 outstanding shares into a single share.

ChatGPT had the AI industry all to itself when it debuted three years ago, but the OG chatbot is finding it harder and harder to fend off the competition these days.

Alphabet, once thought to be an also-ran in the AI race, has recently emerged as the greatest threat to OpenAI’s dominance. The company’s Gemini 3 LLM has surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT on industry benchmarks, while its new Nano Banana Pro image generator has grabbed headlines and users’ attention alike.

Alphabet’s also got some of the deepest pockets in big tech: The company just reported its first $100 billion revenue quarter ever, plans to spend $91 billion to $93 billion in capex this year, and expects a “significant increase” to capex next year as it continues to invest in AI. Meanwhile, OpenAI isn’t expected to start making a profit until 2030, and is staring down the barrel of a $200 billion funding gap that it needs to fill in order to make good on its many data center and cloud buildout plans.

It’s no wonder that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared a “code red” in an internal company memo first reported by The Information today. Altman told employees working on other projects like AI agents and personal assistants to re-focus their efforts on making ChatGPT faster, more reliable, and better able to answer user questions. He also announced that the team working on ChatGPT would be subject to daily check-ins.

Altman reassured his company that the new OpenAI LLM debuting next week can beat Alphabet’s latest model—but judging by the tone of this memo, Altman might be projecting confidence that he suddenly isn’t feeling.—MR

All the crypto bros anxiously checking their digital wallets are having a better day today than they were yesterday.

Monday brought a brutal selloff across digital assets, with bitcoin tumbling 6%. Yesterday’s low marked a 20% drop from bitcoin’s November high, and a roughly 30% drop since its October record as the digital asset fell below its critical level of $85,000.

Today, bitcoin gained 6.63% and climbed back above $91,000, while ethereum, solana, and even dogecoin all recovered—but the crypto carnage may not be over yet.

What’s causing the downturn?

Zooming out, bitcoin has been in a rut for months as investors move away from risk-on assets, which triggered huge sell-offs in the crypto market, driving prices down.

But the immediate catalyst for yesterday’s downturn was Japan’s central bank indicating that it would likely hike rates, which would unwind the so-called “yen carry trade” that provides liquidity to many bitcoin investors.

While the crypto king has shed all of its year-to-date gains, bitcoin stocks have been hit particularly hard as well. Just look at Michael Saylor’s Strategy, which surged last year when it rebranded as a bitcoin play for the stock market—but has now plummeted roughly 60% from its recent high.

Winter is coming

While today’s recovery was promising, if we really are veering into a crypto winter, the damage could just be starting.

For one, the bitcoin funding rate, an indicator of sentiment, turned negative—meaning that there’s more bearish futures bets than bullish ones, according to Bloomberg. Exchanges are also seeing balances of stablecoins rise, which indicates that investors are keeping their money in a more stable asset instead of buying the dip.

But some experts say we’re not technically in a bitcoin bear market quite yet. “This decline comes even as bitcoin’s fundamentals continue to strengthen: We’re seeing rising institutional and sovereign adoption, greater regulatory clarity, and a network that has never been stronger,” Sam Callahan, director of bitcoin strategy and research at OranjeBTC, told CNBC.

If there’s one thing we know about bitcoin evangelists, though, it’s that trading blind hype for a measured, balanced perspective is not exactly their expertise.—LB

• “Big Short” investor Michael Burry is back with another hot take: he just called Tesla “ridiculously overvalued” in a new Substack post.
• Prada announced it officially purchased former rival Versace for about $1.4 billion.
• The S&P 500 may be just fine, but bankruptcies among mom-and-pop businesses just hit a record.
• Corporate America is finally ditching “slop bowls” for the highly innovative…sandwich.
• Costco is the latest company to sue the Trump administration to make sure they get a refund if the Supreme Court strikes down tariffs.
• Netflix just made a second offer for Warner Bros. Discovery, but here’s why Paramount is still the frontrunner.
• YouTube is debuting its own kind of Spotify Wrapped, but for video.

A few delayed economic reports start rolling out tomorrow, including September import prices data and industrial production figures. But the big report to watch is the November ADP jobs data, which will provide the Federal Reserve with critical labor market numbers heading into their December FOMC meeting next week.

Over in earnings land, we’ll hear from Dollar Tree, Macy’s, Salesforce, Thor Industries, C3.ai, and Five Below.