The holiday pricing wars have officially begun.

Late Thursday, Walmart (WMT) announced it would cut the online price of 10 highly anticipated DVD releases to $10. Just hours later, Amazon (AMZN) and Target (TGT) answered by lowering the price of online pre-order DVDs to $9.99.

The move follows Walmart's $10 book promotion on new titles that were announced last month. Walmart also said it plans on more aggressive price cuts as the company is determined to be the online low-price leader.

Pricing wars will be cutthroat this holiday season as retailers know the cash-strapped consumer will be looking for the best bargain.

From the Bull Pen: Amazon stock has been in runaway mode since the company reported earnings two weeks ago. A check of the daily chart shows that a trade over $125 would be a breakout. Those bullish could initiate a long position here with a stop loss at $115.

From the Bear Cave: Those bearish on the market here might want to consider Alaska Air Group (ALK). Its one-year chart shows a double-top formation. Those bearish would short it here with a buy-stop at $30.

A Quick Check Around the World:

Asian trading closed with the Nikkei 0.74%, India 0.59%, Hang Seng 1.63%, Shanghai 0.28%, and Taiwan 0.61%.

Across the pond, we see the FTSE 0.23%, CAC -0.03%, DAX 0.05%, Swiss Market 0.12%, ATX -0.36%, and Stockholm -0.19%.

Over in commodities, crude oil is trading +0.10 to 79.70 while gold is trading +5.10 to 1094.40 this morning.

A quick check of the EUR/USD +.0003 to 1.4877 and the USD/JPY  -.03 to 90.68.
A Look at the Radar:

Economics

08:30 Nonfarm Payrolls -166k cons.
08:30 Unemployment Rate 9.9% cons.
08:30 Average Workweek 33.1 cons.
08:30 Hourly Earnings 0.1% cons.
10:00 Wholesale Inventories -1.0% cons.
02:00 Consumer Credit -10.0B

Earnings

Before : AER, XTEX, FIG, EIX, OSMT, TNP, SU

After:

Speeches

08:00 Tim Geithner
03:00 Elizabeth Duke

Have a great day!