Retailers Are Talking Affordable Turkey as the Holiday Season Begins

(Illustration by Elias Stein)

Retailers are scrambling to show how cheap they can make Thanksgiving. This past week, Target said it was lowering prices on 3,000 food, beverage, and essential items. Target said its holiday meal—frozen turkey, potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy, bread, frozen corn—for four was at its “lowest price ever,” at under $20, less than $5 per person.

Walmart has its own Thanksgiving deal, which retails for under $40, includes 20 items, and serves 10, putting the per-person cost at some $4. Kroger and German grocer Aldi are also offering Thanksgiving bundles from $4 to $5 per person.

Created with Highcharts 9.0.1Selling AffordabilityThe big retailers have been hit by uncertainties this year, from tariffs to inflation to the​government shutdown. Source: FactSet

Created with Highcharts 9.0.1WalmartKrogerTarget2025Nov.-40-30-20-100102030%

Forecasters warn that inflation has made shoppers—particularly in lower-income households—more price sensitive. Then there was the government shutdown. Food aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has been delayed in some states, and more than a million federal workers haven’t received paychecks. Even with the shutdown over, SNAP recipients and federal workers may face more delays.

Created with Highcharts 9.0.1Bird InflationU.S. turkey production has bounced back after a bird-flu ravaged 2024. Prices,​however, remain high. Sources: Y Charts, USDANote: 2025 numbers are estimate

Created with Highcharts 9.0.12015'20'25012345678 billion pounds

Price cuts make sense for retailers trying to protect market share and top-line growth. Yes, they erode bottom lines. But as Oppenheimer’s Rupesh Parikh notes, if consumers lack funds, they are less likely to buy higher-margin discretionary items. Many big retailers will be reporting third-quarter earnings this coming week. Investors will be eager to hear from them about consumers and how they will affect holiday spending.

Write to Sabrina Escobar at sabrina.escobar@barrons.com

Last Week

Markets

The Senate approved a resolution to open the government (until Jan. 30) and a returning House agreed; President Donald Trump signed the spending bill. Ten-year Treasury yields and gold rose. Trump floated a 50-year mortgage and a plan to send most Americans a $2,000 “tariff dividend.” Yields of bonds of artificial-intelligence companies rose over Treasuries. The Dow industrials set a high on Tuesday, but tech, crypto, and small stocks sold off on Thursday. On the week, the Dow was up 0.3%, the S&P 500 0.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.5%.

Companies

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all Boeing MD-11 planes after a United Parcel Service crash. SoftBank Group sold its $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia to fund AI investments. Visa and Mastercard agreed to lower retail fees in litigation that has gone on for two decades. The Federal Trade Commission began an antitrust investigation into proxy advisors Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services. Big Short investor Michael Burry closed his Scion Asset Management hedge fund. Trump cut tariffs on food items.

Deals

Pfizer won the battle for Metsera over Novo Nordisk in a deal that could be worth over $10 billion…Video-sharing platform Rumble, backed by stablecoin issuer Tether, said it would buy Northern Data, also backed by Tether, for up to $970 million…Apollo Global bought a majority stake in Spanish soccer club Atlético de Madrid for $2.5 billion.

Next Week

Wednesday 11/19

The Federal Open Market Committee releases the minutes from its late-October monetary-policy meeting. At that time, the FOMC cut the federal-funds rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.75%-4%. There were two dissenting votes, with Fed governor Stephen Miran voting for a half-point cut, and Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Jeff Schmid voting for no cut at all. A divided Fed has left Wall Street with more uncertainty than normal about the Fed’s future interest-rate path. Traders see the chance of a rate cut at the Dec. 9-10 meeting as basically a coin flip. This is down from a two-thirds chance a week ago, as several committee members argued against a December interest-rate cut this past week.

Artificial-intelligence bellwether Nvidia reports third-quarter fiscal-2026 results. The company’s shares are down 6.1% this month amid investor jitters over lofty valuations for Big Tech, but are still up 42% year to date. Nvidia can allay those fears with another upbeat outlook. The company has surpassed Wall Street’s revenue guidance expectations for 12 consecutive quarters. As for the most recent quarter, analysts polled by FactSet are predicting that Nvidia will earn $1.25 per share on $54.8 billion of sales, of which $48.8 billion are expected to be from the data-center segment. That would represent 54% earnings-per-share growth and 56% revenue growth.

The Numbers

$23 B

Cost of Guinea’s iron-ore mine, the world’s largest, which opened after 30 years of development.

43

The number of days of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which ended on Wednesday.

$110 M

The fee Goldman Sachs is getting as sole advisor on the $55 billion Electronic Arts take-private deal.

1.7

Percentage drop in China’s fixed-asset investment for the past 10 months, the first such decline since at least 1992.

Write to Robert Teitelman at bob.teitelman@dowjones.com