Black Friday's Play: Invest in Shades of Gray

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Black Friday may be the biggest shopping day of the year -- a sort of national holiday of hysterical buying -- but that doesn't mean that investors should buy into the Black Friday hype.

In truth, the Friday after Thanksgiving -- the notorious Black Friday -- which has traditionally kicked off the holiday shopping season, is becoming less vital from a retail standpoint, as shoppers increasingly turn to the Internet and retailers begin rolling out their bargains in September.

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"This year we are seeing the graying of Black Friday, as the stores have already begun using the lure of sales and door-buster deals," Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD, said in a statement. "This year, while Black Friday is still an important indicator, it is not an obvious one.

"There may be some panic when the rush seems lighter than past years," Cohen added, "but based on our holiday market research, that doesn't necessarily mean less business in the long-run."

Indeed, it's probably worth taking a step back here, and considering what Black Friday really means: The term Black Friday was coined in Philadelphia in the 1960s to describe the traffic jams experienced on the day after Thanksgiving as shoppers swarmed the city's commercial center. In the 1980s, the retail industry "reinvented" the phrase to imply the day that retailers' balance sheets move from the red (loss) to the black (profit).

Thus investors have used Black Friday, for years, as a bellwether for how the rest of the holiday season will play out; in the days leading up to this year's Black Friday, the S&P Retail Index is up 1% on the week to close on Tuesday at 404.01.

Still, using Black Friday as a gauge isn't exactly accurate -- and will arguably be even less so this year.