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If consumers try a little harder this year, the holiday season has a shot of hiding memories of last year's nightmare for retailers. The retailers are doing their part, with Walmart (WMT), Gap (GPS), RadioShack (RSH), Walgreens (WAG) and many others opening their doors Thanksgiving Day, giving shoppers the opportunity to start their spending early. There's a chance that consumers will spend a bit more this year to thank each other for keeping their belts so tight for so long.

Forecasts of the season's ultimate result remain difficult to pin down. Some expect a year-over-year decline of 3%, and predictions range to an increase of 2%. Credit is harder to come by, and unemployment remains over 10% and at a 26-year high. But, the pressures on spending are offset by pent-up emotion and a stabilizing financial environment -- even if it isn't getting better yet, it doesn't seem to be getting worse.

The day before Thanksgiving is always an unusual one. We had a slew of economic data today and that all propelled shares higher than what the pre-market indications were.The largest figure today was that jobless claims finally broke under the 500K per week mark... Initial Jobless Claims came in at 466,000, under the 495,000 expected by Bloomberg. The continuing jobless claims also fell by 190,000 to 5,423,000.

The Department of Energy's weekly oil inventories data did show gains after recent drops. This was in crude, gasoline, and refining capacity, with distillates as the only loser. The data on Personal Income & Spending for September were +0.2% on income and +0.7% on spending, versus Dow Jones estimates of +0.1% and +0.6%, respectively.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 10,464.40 +30.69 (0.29%)
S&P 500 1,110.63 +4.98 (0.45%)
Nasdaq 2,176.05 +6.87 (0.32%)

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If Thanksgiving is a bird, a beer and a football game for you, prepare to have your thinking challenged. Many retailers are looking to get a head start on Black Friday this year, opening a day early, some of them for the first time. Most Old Navy Stores (GPS) will open their doors on Thursday, along with Wal-Mart (WMT), Toys "R" Us, RadioShack (RSH) and Walgreen's (WAG). Rather than bet solely on Friday, retailers are looking to eke every last dime they can out of the holiday season this year.

The National Retail Federation expects holiday spending to drop 1% this year to $437.6 billion. "Retailers need to be competitive," says NRF spokeswoman Ellen Davis. "There's a lot riding on the success of November and December retail sales."

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says you can't ignore the positive outlook of Phillips-Van Heusen's CEO.

Can you be as bearish about retail if the company that has almost half the dress shirt business in the country, the one that has more than half the neckwear in this country, the one that has more than 600 stores and is in Kohl's (KSS) (Cramer's Take), Wal-Mart (WMT) (Cramer's Take), Sears (SHLD) (Cramer's Take) and just about everyone else, tells you that things are booming?

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the sooner banks repay TARP, the more likely they will power higher in 2010.

The Federal Reserve wants higher stock prices. That's all I can think of when I see that it wants repayment plans into place for the big banks such as Bank of America (BAC) (Cramer's Take), PNC (PNC) (Cramer's Take), Citigroup (C) (Cramer's Take), Fifth Third (FITB) (Cramer's Take), Wells Fargo (WFC) (Cramer's Take), Regions Financial (RF) (Cramer's Take), SunTrust (STI) (Cramer's Take) and KeyCorp (KEY) (Cramer's Take), all names that haven't repaid the Troubled Asset Relief Program yet.

Why would these plans bring about higher prices?

Retailers expect a strong turnout on Black Friday this year, but they are careful to explain that it doesn't guarantee a winning holiday shopping season.

Consumers are being lured by good deals and special promotions, and Black Friday specials have been leaked earlier than usual this year in the hopes of generating some buzz. The retail sector needs it. Last year's holiday season was the worst in decades, thanks to the financial crisis. This year, the survivors will benefit from fewer competitors chasing the same consumer dollars.

Foot Locker (FL), which competes against Collective Brands (PSS) and Wal-Mart (WMT) for a share of the shoe industry, issued a Q3 report on Thursday after the bell that was typical of many retailers: declining sales and dismal profits. Sometimes, the market is in the mood to ignore such grim news, but such indifference is usually predicated on an earnings beat. Unfortunately, this was not the case for the New York-based specialty athletic retailer.

On an adjusted basis, per-share profit dropped over 40% to 10 cents per share. Analysts were looking for 13 cents per share, according to Earnings.com. Same-store sales took a dive of 8.2%.

Sears Holdings (SHLD) was selling off close to 5% at the time of this writing in reaction to the company's Q3 report. On an adjusted basis, the retailer lost 81 cents per share. That was better than the 90 cents lost in the comparable period, and it did beat the forecast as highlighted in our earnings preview.

I'm sort of shocked that the market didn't bid Sears higher. Going into the earnings news, the stock was hanging out near a 52-week high. Let's see, Wall Street sends the stock to the high point of the range, the release comes out, the loss isn't as bad as analysts expected it to be, and everyone sells. The market sure is strange sometimes, isn't it?

The price at the cash register ticked higher in October, though it was driven by the cost at the pump and on the lot.

Energy prices and new car sales (the highest in 28 years) pushed consumer prices upward in October, they're still cheaper than they were a year earlier. The Labor Department reports that consumer prices edged up 0.3% last month, a tad higher than the 0.2% anticipated. Take food and energy out of the equation, and inflation rose 0.2%, again ahead of the 0.1% that analysts expected.

BJ's Wholesale Club (BJ), whose competitive colleagues include Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT), issued Q3 results earlier today. According to TheStreet.com, adjusted earnings of 45 cents per share met expectations.

And apparently that wasn't good enough for the traders. As of this writing, shares of BJ's were trading down 3% on above-average volume. Was the BJ's story that bad?

Here are some highlights from this past week's earnings coverage on BloggingStocks:

• Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (ANF) lower Q3 results still topped expectations and sent shares higher.
• Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT) posted much better-than-expected Q4 earnings, the first profit in a year.
• AstraZeneca (AZN) received an analyst's downgrade due to concerns over its earnings prospects.
• Blackstone Group (BX) received an analyst's upgrade following the company's Q3 results.
• Blockbuster Inc. (BBI) widened its net loss in Q3 and revenue and same-stores sales declined.
• Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) shares declined after its Q3 numbers fell short of expectations.
• Consolidated Water Co. Inc. (CWCO) earnings prospects for 2010 earned it an analyst upgrade.

Jobless claims almost went under 500,000 and gave one of the lowest readings this year. Unfortunately that wasn't enough for the market because these likely need to get under 400,000 or so before unemployment will stop rising. Oil inventories took some fuel from oil, but the weak 30-Year Treasury auction and the government's budget deficit kept the six day rally from turning into a 7-day rally.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 10,197.47 -93.79 (-0.91%)
S&P 500 1,087.21 -11.30 (-1.03%)
Nasdaq 2,149.29 -17.61 (-0.81%)

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Wal-Mart (WMT), which competes with chains such as Sears Holdings(SHLD), Costco (COST), and Target (TGT), reported results for the third quarter this morning. According to our Before the Bell piece, the famous -- and oftentimes controversial -- retailer beat expectations by a few pennies, earnings 84 cents per share from continuing operations. This was 9% better than the per-share profit earned in the comparable period.

Net sales went up only 1%. They were inhibited by the currency environment. But total sales aren't as relevant as same-store sales when it comes to this sector. If I were a shareholder of Wal-Mart, I would be very disappointed by the comps number, since it is the older locations which indicate how well a retailer is truly doing.

Wal-Mart (WMT) won't close Thanksgiving weekend -- not at all. The world's largest retailer is going to keep its stores open 24 hours in an attempt to manage demand for entry during the busiest shopping days of the year. The company has announced it will also implement other crowd-control measures. The festivities start at 5 AM on November 27, 2009. Of course, this doesn't involve any change fro the Wal-Mart Supercenters which already remain open 24 hours a day, but it does address the 800 stores that aren't.

The 24-hour access alone won't do much to alleviate the pressure from thrill-seekers and the bargain-crazed who will want to push through immediately. To help with this problem, Wal-Mart is allowing people to gather in different parts of the store when waiting for the deals to kick off. According to Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar, "If you've got a 200,000-square-foot store, people will be dispersed throughout the store instead of lined up outside the store." Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

As the old infomercial guys love to say ... "But wait, there's more!"

Macy's (M) reported third-quarter numbers on Wednesday, and although the bottom line beat estimates, shares of the retailer plunged over 8% on high volume. And I don't blame the market whatsoever for deciding to sell the company down.

Macy's said it lost, on an adjusted basis, 3 cents per share. The call was for a loss of 7 cents per share, according to Earnings.com. Okay, I guess we can say losing less money than expected is a good thing. However, looking at the sales numbers really makes me pause. Total sales declined 3.9%, and same-store sales contracted 3.6%.