This is one of those cases where the numbers don't tell the whole story...

I did my level best to avoid shopping malls but still got jammed up in traffic whenever I was even close to one. What attempts I did make were greeted by long lines filled with people in full-on shopping mode. From what I witnessed, a good amount of that shopping took the form of gift certificates which retailers can't book as revenue until they're actually spent, but there's something else is going on too.

Markets work. Consumers learn from the behavior of retailers. People know that everything goes on sale the day after Christmas. Unless there are children for whom Christmas wouldn't be the same without presents under the tree, more and more people are putting off exchanging gifts for a couple of days. It's simple logic: why fights the maddening crowd and pay twice what you should, when a short wait will eliminate much of the stress and let you give even more/better gifts for the same price?

Every year, the numbers reported the day after Christmas bear less and less relation to actual holiday season sales. The week after Christmas is becoming almost as crazy in the malls as the week before. For a more accurate measure of the annual shopping phenemenon, retailers should wait to report results until after the New Year, and investors should wait until then to react. By then, at least a portion of the gift certificates will have been redeemed, most returns will have occurred, and most of the late-Christmas crowd will have celebrated as well.