Alina Selyuk

I talked to Alfred Mai.

His company, ASM Games, sells card games.

Think like family trivia or date night ideas.

And usually you cannot get him on the phone one week before Christmas.

That's the busiest time of year for him.

And last week he was like, yeah, call me now.

I'm free.

And I had this question, like, did sales exceed his expectations because his expectations were too low or because people spent with abandon?

And he said, it's probably both.

We don't have total numbers.

Those will come in January.

But all signs seem to point to a surprisingly big year.

You know, for how much we've talked about tariffs, with all the delays and changes, they did not disrupt the holiday season as much as feared.

We saw Black Friday set a record.

Then Cyber Monday set a spending record.

Adobe Analytics, which tracks online shopping, saw people spending over $10 million every minute on the evening of Cyber Monday.

MasterCard, which tracks spending online and in stores, estimates that spending grew nearly 4% in November and December.

For how much we've talked about tariffs, with all the delays and changes, they did not disrupt the holiday season as much as feared.

We saw Black Friday set a record, then Cyber Monday set a spending record.

Adobe Analytics, which tracks online shopping, saw people spending over $10 million every minute on the evening of Cyber Monday.