Holiday sales up just 4%, slowest in 5 years; Dow up 98
CBS
Transcript
[Music] Wall Street is closed today for Christmas. Traders get back to work tomorrow for the final few trading days of 2007. We'll see if investors can turn a lastminute Santa Claus rally into a year-end rally as we get the first reports from retailers. With the holiday shopping season behind us, last minute shoppers jam stores and shopping malls in the final hours before Christmas, ending the season with a bang. But it may not have been enough. Analysts are still predicting only a 4% gain in sales over the last year, the slowest growth in 5 years. On Monday, investors extended gains during a half day of trading. The Dow ended up 98 points, the Nasdaq up 21. And with the holiday shopping done, now it's time to start paying off all that credit card debt. It's something more and more Americans are having trouble with. Delinquencies and defaults on credit card debt jumped 26% in the past year. That's due in part to the slumping housing market. With food prices soaring, this Christmas dinner is going to set families back a little bit more this year. The cost of groceries is up about 5% with milk the biggest culprit. The nationwide average for a gallon of whole milk is $3.80 a gallon, up a whopping 23% this year and much higher than the three bucks we're paying for gasoline. That's your money watch. Log on to cbsnews.com for more. In New York, I'm Carter Evans.