Macy's

Retailers ended a rough fiscal year with better-than-expected sales in January. According to a tally of major retailers by Thomson Reuters, comparable sales at stores open at least a year rose 3.3%. That led some companies to boost their guidance for their upcoming year-end earnings reports.

Careful shoppers and leaner store shelves will be the norm as retail recovers in 2010, and that state of affairs could last a while, according to a new study by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.

The final numbers are in, and strong online sales, picky late shoppers and targeted discounting helped lift December retail sales above last year's totals -- but it won't be enough to put 2009 in the plus column. January's clearance sales won't be much help either; they will be shorter and more thinly stocked this year.

If you had any doubts that retailers would have to offer big discounts to bring shoppers into their stores, consider this: Well into the eight nights of Hanukkah and with only one more weekend to go before Christmas, nearly half of us aren't even halfway through our holiday shopping. Nearly one-fifth of Americans haven't crossed even one name off their gift lists.

It looks like Cyber Monday wasn't all hype, but Black Friday wasn't strong enough to lift retailers into a successful November. The monthly retail figures are out, and of 30 major national retailers followed by Thomson Reuters (TRIN), only five beat their expected sales targets for the month. Most retailers reported strong online sales that only partly offset wholesale bargain hunting at stores.

"Shoppers continue to give signs that they are ready to loosen the grip on their spending plans, but at the same time remain very cautious and deal-focused in their spending," said Frank Badillo, senior economist at consulting firm Retail Forward, in a report.

Macy's (M) CEO Terry Lundgren says every dollar of online sales influences almost $6 of sales inside the retailer's stores. According to Lundgren, many shoppers first see an item online and want to look at it in person before making a purchase. For example, a customer may see a piece of clothing online but ends up visiting a store to check the fit.

The mutually beneficial relationship between online and real world shopping works both ways. Some customers see items in the store and choose to buy them online to take advantage of the shipping options. Whatever the motive, online sales are growing fast. "We're going to do close to a billion dollars in online sales this year and it's growing at 16 percent year-to-date," Lundgren said in an interview with DailyFinance at the company's Herald Square store in New York City on Black Friday.

Macy's (M) CEO Terry Lundgren said he's "encouraged" by the level of buying activity at the company's Herald Square store in New York City Friday.

The day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. is nicknamed Black Friday because it's the day when many retailers become profitable for the year. Macy's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lundgren told DailyFinance that Macy's sales were strong Friday because of the number of people he saw in the store walking around with purchases.

What's hokey, full of hot air and increasingly looking like a Thanksgiving miracle for NBC? The network's 61-year old tradition of broadcasting the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The three-hour broadcast remains as popular with viewers as it was in 1991 -- a feat that's remarkably rare among television networks and almost unheard of for NBC these days.

To put that into perspective, NBC currently draws a 4.9 household rating, less than half of the 12.3 rating it enjoyed during the 1991-92 season (before networks started losing viewers in droves to cable and the Internet), according to Nielsen Media Research. NBC now only attracts 5.6 million viewers to its nightly prime-time shows. Yet somehow, the Thanksgiving Day broadcast has managed to hold steady at roughly 20 million viewers annually since 1991, according to Nielsen. Even more intriguing, the rival Thanksgiving broadcast on CBS has shed viewers during the period, falling to about 7 million viewers from 10 million in 1991, Nielsen says.

Macy's (M) closed a losing quarter with an upbeat holiday forecast, saying it will have fresh merchandise for the holidays, but just enough to avoid big markdowns. And it boosted its forecast for the fourth quarter and the full year, based on better-than-expected results.

The department store company posted a net loss of $35 million, or 8 cents per share, a penny more than the analysts' estimate, but an improvement over a $44 million loss for the same period last year. Total sales of $5.28 billion were down 3.9% below last year, and 3.6% lower on a same-store basis.

Unemployment, which jumped to a 26-year high of 10.2% in October, will continue to be a dark cloud looming over the U.S. economy through at least next year, according to World Bank President Robert Zoellick.

"If you have large-scale unemployment remain, say about [the] 10% level you have in the U.S., you're going to see feedback effects," Zoellick is quoted by Bloomberg News as saying. His comments are hardly a surprise.