>>Saw it coming a mile away, huh?<<
I wouldn’t go that far, but unexpected? No.
BTW, with this kind of data, I’m really only concerned with year over year, not month over month. Imagine an article that says “Late November Retail Sales Soar” compared to October sales. That’s not news, even though it is technically accurate. What would be news would be if black Friday DIDN’T outperform the previous Friday.
It’s all seasonally adjusted annualized rates so they are comparable M/M.