NEW YORK, Nov 29: Investors will straggle back from a weekend of turkey leftovers and daunting lines at cash registers to a fresh month on Wall Street and more data that points to strengthening economy, analysts say.

But any gains in the stock market next week as investors return in full force from the Thanksgiving Day holiday may be tempered by nagging concerns over high share prices and record lows in the dollar.

“The valuation of stocks is what is preventing them from going a lot higher at this point,” said John Davidson, president and chief executive officer of PartnerRe Asset Management. “There is more confidence around the economy than around stocks.”

Light volumes marked this week, when the stock market shut on Thursday for Thanksgiving and closed early on Friday. But major market gauges scored hefty gains. The blue-chip Dow industrials raked in a 1.6 per cent gain, the tech-stuffed Nasdaq shot up 3.5 per cent and the broad Standard & Poor’s 500 advanced 2.2 per cent.

But for the month, it was a mixed bag for the major stock indexes, with the Dow finishing November down 0.2 per cent, while the Nasdaq gained 1.5 per cent and the S&P 500 added 0.7 per cent.

For the year, though, the trend is sharply higher. The Dow is up 17 per cent, the Nasdaq is up 48 per cent and the S&P 500 is up 20 per cent so far.

A slew of strong data on the US economy helped propel stocks higher this week. And analysts expect reports next week to point to improvements in the job market in November as well as in the nation’s manufacturing and services sectors.

A hectic weekend of shopping also will grab the limelight next week, as investors search for evidence that consumers are spending heavily this holiday season and helping stoke the economic recovery.

“The market has developed an upward bias, and I think it will continue into next week,” said Stanley Nabi, managing director at Credit Suisse Asset Management.

Americans made their annual day-after-Thanksgiving pilgrimage to the malls on Friday for predawn sales offering hefty markdowns. Analysts widely expect this year’s holiday season to show a big improvement from last year’s weak levels.

“You start to enter a seasonally strong period for stocks, and a lot of optimism about the Christmas season,” said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management. “There will be a lot of focus on how this weekend’s sales went, and if those numbers are good.”

The day after Thanksgiving — known as Black Friday because it once marked the day when retailers got out of the red — is the traditional start to the holiday shopping season, which generates as much as 40 per cent of annual revenues for key gift destinations such as toy stores and apparel chains.

“Between now and Christmas, it’s really going to be about how companies individually are doing, in what for many of them is a ‘make or break’ time of year,” Meckler said.—Reuters