Uncertainty surrounding the emergence of the Omicron Variant in South Africa (and elsewhere since) drove markets to a dismal Black Friday performance, as hastily issued travel bans and fears of new lockdowns overwhelmed Wall Street – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch

Traders around the world appear to have calmed a bit since then, and we’ll be watching if American investors follow suit - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch

With that in mind, what, precisely, will the 2021 holiday season bring with it? More shoppers in stores, to be sure, and with them more optimism for retailers than “at any point since the start of the pandemic, which shuttered stores and wiped out sales.” But even without Omicron looming, this definitely isn’t the “carefree” experience it was prepandemic - NYTimes and Marketplace

Here’s a taste of what that meant in a mid-pandemic Black Friday around the US and Europe - NYTimes and MarketWatch and WSJ

Whether finalized or not, the recent Hertz-announced deal to buy up a fleet of Teslas to add to its rental car offerings marks a significant milestone “in a broader global shift among companies embracing greener technologies to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.” Indeed, rivals Avis and Enterprise let it be known that they were considering similar acquisitions shortly after the Hertz news, despite the infrastructure and cost challenges accompanying the moves - WSJ

As for those e-cars, Nissan’s the latest giant automaker to go all in on an electric future, announcing plans to spend $17.6 billion on battery-powered vehicles over the next 5 years in hopes of “recaptur[ing] a degree of the prominence it held in the electric-vehicle race after its pioneering introduction of the Leaf EV more than a decade ago” - WSJ and TechCrunch

Details on the rise of group robberies targeting major retailers around the U.S. - NYTimes

Peloton has sued Lululemon, seeking a declaration from a SDNY federal judge that it “didn’t infringe on athletic designs, weeks after Lululemon sent a cease-and-desist letter over the bike company’s new clothing line” that launched in September - WSJ

The blow-by-blow on how a vishing scam led a Robinhood customer service rep to “unwittingly hand[] over the keys to the personal information of about 7 million customers, in what’s now believed to be one of the biggest retail brokerage cyber-breaches of all time” - Bloomberg

A full-court-press effort at hiring foreign truck drivers to ease its domestic supply-chain woes isn’t working for the U.K., as a paltry number of temporary work visas has been far from tempting for overseas drivers - NYTimes

What will start the car of the future (that’s increasingly the car of now)? It won’t jingle, but the rest is still up for debate - NYTimes

Stay safe, and get boosted,

MDR