The Black Friday stampedes will continue

This is a delayed edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a Thanksgiving stuffing of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here.  Today's Agenda Online shopping isn't for everybody, especially not on Black Friday. Europe's Social Democrats face mass extinction. Short-selling doesn't work, except when it does. The deeper meanings of Saturday bus service in Tel Aviv. People Still Like to Shop, in Person For the first time, U.S. consumers polled by PwC for its 2019 Holiday Outlook said they plan to do the majority of their Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa shopping online. Sarah Halzack is pretty sure some of those people were lying. Online purchases are likely to amount to less than a quarter of the dollar value of this year's U.S. holiday shopping, and while online's share has grown a lot, younger shoppers seem more likely than their elders to see this shopping as a pleasurable social experience. Gen Zers also still do most of their shopping in physical stores, although it does depend a bit on what they're buying. Given that my Gen Z son is the only member of the family who ever goes shopping on Black Friday, I am inclined to trust this data. It doesn't mean that brick-and-mortar retailers are in the clear, or that online's market share will stop growing. But as the crowds that still flock to stores at midnight on Thanksgiving indicate, many people still approach shopping as a sport and a social experience. Retailers that want to survive the Amazon onslaught, Sarah writes, need to do whatever they can to make that experience compelling. Among the essential elements of the holiday-shopping experience in the U.S. are Salvation Army bell ringers. Stephen Carter argues that you shouldn't shun them even if you don't like some of the political positions the organization takes, such as its opposition to same-sex marriage. Without religious volunteers, the U.S. charitable sector would be devastated, so it makes sense to judge the Salvation Army and other religious groups that help the poor by their actions rather than their words. Europe's Social Democrats Are in Big Trouble In the U.S., Democratic Socialists have recently been enjoying unheard-of fame and electoral success, albeit it from a pretty insignificant starting position. In Europe, where Social Democrats used to run major countries, Andreas Kluth says they face mass extinction. In Scandinavia and Iberia the Social Democratic parties have remained relevant mainly by becoming pragmatic centrists, while in Denmark they've done so by becoming anti-immigration hardliners. But in France, Germany, Italy and other continental countries, the party is nowhere near the political force it once was. The European Social Democrats' problem, Andreas writes, is that they're still stuck in the mid-20th century. They know how to stand up for factory workers — and, these days, retired factory workers. But they don't have interesting answers to the important economic, environmental and social challenges of today. Sometimes Short-Selling Is a Waste of Money Long-short investing is how hedge funds got their name. The idea was to hedge your investments in stocks that you liked by selling-short stocks that you didn't, thus delivering a positive return to investors regardless of what the market was doing. There's one big problem with this approach, at least for quantitative hedge fund managers. According to a new study summarized by John Authers, existing quant strategies for picking stocks to go long or short on are much better at identifying promising longs than shorts — so much better that even bothering with the latter is probably a waste of time and money. This evidence does not imply that short-selling sleuths who find out bad things about particular companies are useless, Authers writes. And Joe Nocera has a story to tell about just such a company: MiMedx, a maker of "regenerative biomaterials" (mostly wound grafts) whose chief executive officer went to war with the short-sellers who targeted his stock. Forced out last year by the company's board, former CEO William Taylor was charged this week with securities fraud in a New York federal court. So maybe those shorts knew what they were doing. Tel Aviv's Saturday Bus Riders Are a Sign of Change in Israel Ultra-orthodox Jews have been gaining in numbers and clout in Israel for decades. But a backlash has begun, writes Zev Chafets, with Tel Aviv's mayor ordering buses to keep running through the Sabbath last Saturday, and opportunistic politician Avigdor Lieberman embracing anti-clerical sentiment and meeting with enough electoral success to thwart the creation of a coalition government that included ultra-orthodox parties. It's about time, Zev argues, given that the insular ways of ultra-orthodox groups are at odds with the Israeli ethos. Telltale Charts With U.S. pecan production the lowest it's been in a decade (blame 2018's  Hurricane Michael, which devastated Georgia's pecan belt), imports — mainly from Mexico — are showing up on a lot of Thanksgiving pies, writes David Fickling.  Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainerd has outlined a harrowing (for bond traders) vision of the future in which the Fed takes control of the entire yield curve during economic downturns, writes Brian Chappatta. Further Reading Is a manufacturing rebound in the offing? The CEO of John Deere doesn't think so. — Brooke Sutherland Latin America's protests may lead to strengthened ties with the U.S. — James Stavridis Local newspapers are struggling, and a federal court ruling against cross-media mergers sure isn't helping. — Ramesh Ponnuru Russia should come clean on sports doping, but admitting error is something Vladimir Putin doesn't know how to do. — Leonid Bershidsky  Worker-owned companies actually do pretty well. — Noah Smith The U.K. is good at health care, but terrible at social care. — Therese Raphael ICYMI Surprise! Stocks went up again! Deutsche Bank is selling lots of stuff, and Goldman Sachs is buying most of it. Silicon Valley likes soccer, with Silver Lake Management buying 10% of Manchester City and Meg Whitman 20% of FC Cincinnati. Kickers Russian cows get virtual reality headsets "to reduce anxiety." (h/t Scott Kominers)  Give $1,000 each to 10,500 randomly selected poor Kenyan households, and good things happen. South Korean Go champion retires, saying his AI competition "cannot be defeated." Have you considered bologna cake with ranch cream cheese icing for Thanksgiving dinner? Note: Please send complaints about today's newsletter to Justin Fox at justinfox@bloomberg.net, but more general complaints, as well as pizza, to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. Programming Note: There will be no newsletter on Thursday or Friday. Regular weekend service resumes after that. Sign up here and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. FOLLOW US SEND TO A FRIEND You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. Unsubscribe | Bloomberg.com | Contact Us Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022