here to share where he sees bright spots is brian nagle. brian, it's good to see you. >> nice seeing you too. >> we had some good numbers, i guess, in terms of personal income coming through. the monthly retail sales figures have sort of generally been okay. then you get this choppy back and forth with the individual chains reporting. what do you think the general tone is going into this season? >> well, look, i know there's a lot of debate on this. i think we're going to have an okay but not great holiday selling season. there's a lot of takes here. you mentioned in the opening, we can't dismiss -- i know this sounds silly to most people -- but this is a shortened holiday selling season. there's as few days as possible between thanksgiving and christmas. that's one negative. we also have, i see this with all my companies reporting lately, there are clear indications of a stressed consumer. now, the consumer's still showing up for big events, so that's maybe a positive for the holiday, but in between big events you're seeing sign os a stres