Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Why do stock prices of retailers not surge during the holidays?
That's a pretty good question for a six-year-old! In addition to the good answers which point out that expectations are priced in, let's deny the premises of the question: Sales do not increase the value of a company; a company could be, for example, losing money on every sale. Share prices are (at least in theory) correlated with profits.  So let's suppose that company X is unprofitable 320 days a year and is relying upon sales in late November and December to be in the black for the year. (Hence "black Friday".)  Carefully examine the supposition of this scenario: we have a company that is so unprofitable that it must gamble everything on successfully convincing bargain hunting consumers in a weak economy to buy stuff they don't actually need from them and not a competitor. Why would this inspire investor confidence? There are plenty of companies that fail to meet their sales targets at Christmas, for plenty of reasons.