Retail Sales Up For October

Halloween scared up some business for sales-starved retailers, but left them still guessing about the Christmas shopping season.

Merchants who reported their October sales figures Thursday said they had respectable gains due to Halloween and the arrival - finally - of cooler weather.

But analysts warn there are no guarantees of how holiday sales will go. Despite high levels of consumer confidence and low unemployment levels, consumers haven’t been spending freely this year.

“Consumers are still very cautious,” said Kurt Barnard, a retail consultant and president of Barnard’s Retail Trend Report. “Just because they went shopping at the end of October doesn’t mean Christmas will be good.”