Black Friday, which takes place on 23 November this year, traditionally kicks off the holiday shopping season. Thanks to a healthy economy and strong consumer confidence, we believe that this holiday season will, once again, deliver the type of continuous holiday shopping sales growth we have become so accustomed to over past years.

While concerns about trade tensions, rising interest rates and the renewed volatility of the stock market are not completely unjustified, we have enough confidence in the fundamental backdrop to be optimistic that this holiday season will be another one for the record books. Total holiday shopping season sales are expected to reach USD 721 billion, yet another record high. At the same time, recent economic indicators signal on-going resilient global growth.

We offer two Certificates:

• Investors that are bullish on equity markets in general, can buy a Tracker Certificate with 100% exposure to a  selection of US stocks expected to benefit of the holiday shopping season.
• Investors that are concerned regarding the recent increase of volatility and a possible correction in equity markets, can buy a leveraged Long/Short Certificate (200% exposure) going Long the Black Friday Basket versus Short the S&P 500 Index. This allows to partly reduce market risk and profit from an outperformance of the Black Friday Basket over the S&P 500 Index.