Preliminary reports say Black Friday sales were stronger than expected, mostly due to a surge in on line shopping. Add up the totals between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and retailers say you’ll get higher sales than last year.

As economic analyst Hank Fishkind tells 90.7’s Nicole Darden-Creston, you can learn a lot from retail sales reports about the financial state of the nation and your neighborhood. And Fishkind says these initial reports seem to bring glad tidings.