According to @StockMKTNewz, Mastercard SpendingPulse reported U.S. Black Friday retail sales excluding autos rose 4.1% year over year, while e-commerce sales increased 10.4% year over year, offering a bullish holiday read-through for consumer demand (source: Mastercard SpendingPulse via @StockMKTNewz, Nov 29, 2025). SpendingPulse measures in-store and online sales across all forms of payment, providing a broad, near-real-time view of retail activity during the holiday season that traders use for Q4 demand tracking (source: Mastercard SpendingPulse methodology, Mastercard Inc.). On equity watchlists, stronger holiday spend data often centers attention on consumer discretionary and e-commerce exposures such as XRT, XLY, AMZN, SHOP, and on payment networks MA, V, PYPL whose revenues are tied to transaction volumes (source: State Street Global Advisors fund descriptions for XRT/XLY; Mastercard, Visa, PayPal 10-Ks). For crypto, macro demand surprises are monitored given the documented increase in crypto–equity correlations since 2020, meaning BTC and ETH can be sensitive to shifts in risk sentiment from U.S. growth data (source: International Monetary Fund, Crypto Prices Move More in Sync With Stocks, 2022). Next catalysts include Cyber Monday and subsequent holiday-season updates from Mastercard SpendingPulse and the National Retail Federation that traders use to refine Q4 revenue expectations for retail and payments sectors (source: Mastercard SpendingPulse holiday reports; National Retail Federation seasonal outlooks).