From all accounts it looks as though the consumer is loosening the reigns a bit and planning on splurging  this holiday season. I mean after all the market’s move off the March lows has made folks feel better about their 401k and IRAs…right? All the positive numbers that are coming out about housing and the economy also help tint those rose colored glasses. Add to that the average length of a recession is around 2 years and that’s right were we are in the current recession and things start to look like we will be in for a Santa Claus rally.

I’m not a shopper and the thought of not waiting in lines with people whose breath smells like they’ve been eating turd sandwiches and body order that would knock a buzzard off a trash pile are the main reasons I’ve always been more of a Cyber Monday guy versus a black Friday guy. I was recently turned on to using $MSFT bing for shopping and registered for their “bing cashback” program. I found some pretty amazing deals through slickdeals.net and did a majority of my shopping through that. However, with Bing I found similar deals and a percentage of the sales price would be rebated back to me.  I must admit that I got pretty hooked and probably spent more than I should, but I also realized that I’m probably not the only guy using these services.

Bottom line is that I think names like $AMZN $AAPL $WMT $TGT and even $EBAY are probably going to do better than most this holiday season. I realize that this is common sense, but the Bing shopping is a new catalyst and these names I mentioned above were some of the more aggressive retailers that popped up in my search results. On Friday I entered some bullish positions (via put spreads) in both $AAPL and $AMZN on the “Dubai pullback” and will add to them in the coming week with more pullbacks. I like $WMT but haven’t found a good entry yet and I’ve been stalking $TGT as well.

On a side note, I’ve noticed that $DELL has been pretty aggressive as well, but to be honest I don’t think I’ll ever buy another Dell computer. Probably wont’ catch me in line to buy one of their smart phones either…I remember the Axim and got taken on one of those. Dell needs to make an acquisition or do something to change the field they play on. Being number three isn’t that great, especially when number two is Acer.