US: Online sales on Thanksgiving Day hit record $5.1B

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) - US consumers have turned to online shopping on this year's Thanksgiving Day when internet-based sales hit an all-time highest level of $5.1 billion, according to Adobe Analytics data on Friday.

Due to the novel coronavirus, restrictions on many states and self-quarantine measures, millions of American have preferred doing their holiday shopping online, instead of heading to a store, as the country braces for a vaccine in early December.

US President Donald Trump said earlier on Twitter that COVID-19 vaccine distributions in his country will start "next week and the week after" for frontline workers and senior citizens.

Consumer spending increased 21.4% on this year's Thanksgiving Day, compared to last year's $4.2 billion, while almost half of the online purchases were made on smartphones on Thursday, Adobe said.

US retailers have also extended their sales and discounts to the days following Thanksgiving -- Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday -- during which analysts expect new annual records in each of these days.

- Tesla becomes 6th largest US firm

The strong consumer spending has also provided optimism for the US stock market, where two of the major indexes reached all-time highest levels on Friday, after the Dow Jones hit record 30,000 points on Tuesday.

At the final bell on Friday's shorter session due to Thanksgiving weekend, the S&P 500 gained 0.2% to end the day at record closing high of 3,638 points.

The Nasdaq soared 0.9% to also close at an all-time high level of 12,205 points with tech stocks such as Zoom jumping 6.2%.

US electric carmaker Tesla again saw its stock price reach a fresh record high level of $598 per share before ending the day $585 a share with a 2% daily gain.

With that result, Tesla has become the sixth largest US company based on value with a market capitalization of $555 billion on Friday, surpassing business tycoon Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway that has $542.4 billion market value.