All I’ve been hearing today are media reports about Black Friday shopping as if some kind of meaningful estimates and prognostications can be made concerning holiday season sales based on the day after Thanksgiving activity. Let’s look at some issues:

Thanksgiving occurred this year on the earliest possible date in November. There are additional shopping day(s) if you count Black Friday as the start of the holiday shopping season. There’s an extra shopping day this year compared to last, two more days than in 2005 and five more shopping days in the season than will be the case next year.

Is Black Friday the start of the holiday shopping season or should the much ballyhooed discount day be considered the last clearance day of the pre-holiday retailing year or a bit of both?

Does anyone think most of the discount shoppers are buying exclusively for Christmas? If I want something cheap I don’t care if it’s the day after Thanksgiving or July 5th. If I’m a discount shopper I’m at the mall the day after Thanksgiving whether or not stores are selling sunblock or tinsel.

Major retailers will not be reordering for the Christmas season what they just sold at deep discount on Black Friday. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s a bit of a zero-sum issue. Retailers have learned from Christmas Past that whatever had to be cleared out on Black Friday at deep discounts will have to be cleared out the day after Christmas at deep discounts. In other words, clear it out early and don’t reorder the stuff. All of a sudden people will be buying at full price on December 26th what took a clearance sale to move on November 23rd? No way.

Gift cards. Maybe in the days of Currier and Ives Black Friday was the most important shopping day of the year. Stats are beginning to show December 26th may have it bested. Gift cards are emerging as a holiday season staple. Those will continue to be redeemed well into January. It’s not so much when the season starts, it’s when it ends.

This year’s value of the dollar: Reports from the east and west coasts indicate foreign travelers are having a heyday at US retailers. Yeah Brits! At least Macy’s was smart enough to put luggage on sale so our friends from the UK have greater capacity to bring all the lower-priced US stuff home. Count on our friends to the north joining the low-dollar shopping party. That adds to this year’s numbers but most likely won’t apply to next year’s season and can even skew comparisons with prior years.

In all, my contention is no matter what is reported as having been sold on Black Friday, virtually no accurate conclusions can be drawn from the numbers and compared to prior years to determine the success of this year’s holiday shopping season until the season is over.

How does this impact AAPL? I think so much attention is already being paid to holiday shopping forecasts and early results it will move the market. Hold fast and still. AAPL will move higher as the dust settles. But for the next few weeks investor sentiment may see some wild gyrations due to this weird fascination the media has with day-by-day holiday season shopping numbers.

Apple is operating its   retail stores without fixed cash registers . That’s holiday retailing - There’s no talk of big discounts, but better service.

I’m sure Apple will be mostly ignored by the media on Monday when the weekend’s sales are released by the major retail chains. But IMHO this is the way to serve customers: Provide better products and move people through the sales transactions quickly.

I don’t believe we need to be mentioned to get a share price jump. If the retail numbers are good then Apple’s $/sh will follow. JMO A strong showing by consumers on black friday gives the market reasurance than the consumers are going to keep on spending regardlss of what they hear on T.V. In the south people start buying their Christmas trees during Thanksgiving. This also coincides with the start of the shopping season.

I expect the markets to open higher on Monday. But please remember for the most part retailers will not be reordering what was sold through on Friday. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. This of course benefits Apple which has much more control over its distribution channels. I expect the Apple retail stores to report very high increases in store traffic YOY and same store sales above 10% growth for the season.