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In this article WFC BAC Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT Many shoppers say they plan to spend less this Black Friday as the cost-of-living crisis bites. Richard Baker | In Pictures | Getty Images American consumers are tapping the brakes on spending as the Federal Reserve's interest rate increases reverberate throughout the economy, according to the CEOs of two of the largest American banks. After two years of pandemic-fueled, double-digit growth in Bank of America card volume, "the rate of growth is slowing," CEO Brian Moynihan said Tuesday at a financial conference. While retail payments surged 11% so far this year to nearly $4 trillion, that increase obscures a slowdown that began in recent weeks: November spending rose just 5%, he said. It was a similar story at rival Wells Fargo , according to CEO Charlie Scharf, who cited shrinking growth in credit-card spending and roughly flat debit card transaction volumes. The bank leaders, with their bird's...

Consumers took advantage of heavy discounting by online retailers to start up the holiday shopping season in high gear. According to Adobe Analytics, record online spending on Thanksgiving and Black Friday drove Cyber Week — Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday — to $35 billion in total sales, itself a record and up 4% from last year. The numbers were driven by discounts across categories, with peak deals of 34% off the prices of toys, 25% off electronics like computers and TVs and 18% off apparel. “With oversupply and a softening consumer spending environment, retailers made the right call this season to drive demand through heavy discounting,” Vivek Pandya, a lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement. “It spurred online spending to levels that were higher than expected, and reinforced e-commerce as a major channel to drive volume and capture consumer interest.”  Top-selling toys included Pokémon cards, Legos, Hot Wheels, Disney's “Encanto”-branded merchandise...