Like I’m sure many of you are, we’re doing last minute prep for Thanksgiving here at the Barton home in Delaware. It may be a smaller gathering than most years because of Covid-19, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to skimp on the turkey.

But for many investors, economists, and retailers, Thanksgiving is most important for what comes after it – Black Friday. Since at least 1952, the day after Thanksgiving has been the unofficial start to the Christmas holiday shopping season.

Black Friday has been the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S. since at least 2005, and probably much longer. According to the National Retail Federation, American consumers went from spending $26.8 billion on Black Friday shopping weekend in 2005, to $58.3 billion in 2017. Now, those numbers don’t include the Monday after Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday.

If you include that day, Finder estimates Americans will spend $148.5 billion on shopping over Black Friday this year.

And thanks to an extreme overreaction to an earnings report, one of my favorite retail stocks has been served up for big profits at a beautiful discount – just like a Thanksgiving turkey on a silver platter. We’ll delve into this great buy opportunity.

But first, let’s dig into why this holiday season will be such a good one for retailers…

Another Monday, another bit of good news from a Covid vaccine trial. It’s Groundhog Day – over and over (Could JNJ news be up next Monday?).

This time it was AstraZeneca plc (AZN) that released preliminary data on the vaccine against Covid-19 that it’s been working on with Oxford University. Unlike Pfizer Inc.’s (PFE) and Moderna Inc.’s (MRNA) two vaccines that scored around 95% and 94.5% efficacy rates, AstraZeneca’s has an efficacy of about 70%. The AZN vaccine does have some distribution benefits since it requires only standard refrigeration.

If anything, this latest bit of news is even more impressive than what we’ve seen before. Pfizer and Moderna used new mRNA technology to get vaccines for Covid-19 out in record time.

Meanwhile, AstraZeneca and Oxford University used existing vaccine technology to make a vaccine in under a year, rather than the several years it usually takes. So did Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), which should be announcing its preliminary results soon as well.