Coming Week: Bleak Data on Tap

Next week will be another balancing act for investors weighing negative data against hopes that fresh leadership on Capitol Hill will begin to turn the bleak economic tide.

Retailers will issue statements to characterize the results of Black Friday, the traditional start of holiday-shopping madness. But, this year, with layoffs increasing and household wealth declining, consumers have cut back mightily.

Retailers offered deep discounts and extended hours on Friday, hoping to lure in shoppers with the best bargains. Shoppers were lined up outside of Best Buy (BBY Quote), Kohl's (KSS Quote), Target (TGT Quote) and Wal-Mart (WMT Quote) stores across the country, hoping to be the first in line to grab gifts on the cheap. Investors will be eager to see who comes out ahead in snagging those customers' tightly-held dollars.

"Certainly the retail results coming out of [Friday] are going to be weighing heavily on the markets in the week to come," Ken Roberts, principal at Harbor Lights Financial. "It will be interesting to see how successful or unsuccessful Black Friday is."

Among the economic data to be unveiled next week, Roberts says that unemployment reports on Friday will have the most significant impact. Investors are keeping a watchful eye on those figures, which tie directly to productivity and corporate earnings, and the overall health of the economy.

The unemployment rate surged to 6.5% last month. Economists expect employers to have shed another 268,000 jobs in November, pushing the rate up to 6.7%, according to Thomson Reuters. Roberts expects the figures to be worse than the consensus, and expects unemployment will be a "key driver of the market going forward, at least through February."