Big Black

Preliminary results from the Black Friday weekend have pointed to a mostly positive start to the industry's biggest selling period. But retailers are counting on other events, including today's online sales kickoff Cyber Monday, to give shoppers another reason to open their wallets.

For the past several years, Black Friday has ranked as the largest shopping day of the year, in both sales and traffic. But analysts say a host of factors is converging to make it likely that Black Friday 2010 will set a record.