CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Let's head live to New York City now to check in with Mary Snow. A big shopping weekend, so I have the big business question of the morning for you, how did it go for retailers?</s>MARY SNOW, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, you know strong start for this holiday shopping season and the numbers came in better than what analysts were expecting, but they're saying don't read too much into it in terms of being a signal for the whole season. But on Friday, sales totaled an estimated $7.4 billion. That's an increase of 12 percent from last year and that's according to Shopper Track, which is a consulting and tracking firm. Discount chains among the best winners for the weekend. And Wal-Mart, for instance, the largest discount retailer, said that it had sales on Friday up 14 percent from a year ago. Sales on Saturday, the pace there did not keep up with Friday's sales. But for the two days, the average for the sales were about 10.9 percent -- Carol.</s>COSTELLO: And how can we expect the markets to do this morning?</s>SNOW: Well right now futures are pointing higher, and this is after we had eight straight winning weeks for the Dow. Although markets did end lower on Friday, they still closed higher for the week and for the month. The Nasdaq for the month was up 11 percent -- Carol.</s>COSTELLO: And we absolutely love that. Thank you very much.</s>SNOW: Absolutely. OK. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Holiday Sales off to Strong Start