bricks-and-mortar

The holiday season has been strong for retail sales overall, but some chains have still found lumps of coal in their stockings. And as the holiday season winds down, what's bad for retailers may be good for you.

Blockbuster's long anticipated bankruptcy filing is apparently headed down the final stretch and could come by the end of the week. One of the cost-cutting moves the video chain is teeing up calls for 500 to 800 additional store closures beyond the nearly 1,000 it previously planned.

How was Black Friday for retailers? It depends on who's counting. ShopperTrack, which tracks store sales, reports that spending on the day after Thanksgiving was up 0.5% to $10.66 billion. The distribution of the improvement around the country was mixed, and some regions did poorly. In the West,...