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

ANKARA

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.