MasterCard Advisors (NYSE: MA) service SpendingPulse says luxury and electronics sales headed upward last month, in a pleasant deviation from what became the norm all too long ago. A few other product categories posted gains as well – showing stability, if not a recovery. But, at this stage of the game, we'll take what we can get, right?

Luxury sales, not including jewelry, gained 3.4% year-over-year – that's an increase of $891 million. Last September, luxury goods suffered a 9.4% decline. Yet, this category is still below its September 2005 level of $94 million. Jewelry sales gained 1.2% relative to last year, compared to a year-over-year decline of 5.8% a year ago. Compared to apparel sales, this is a profound turn. In September 2008, the clothing category was off 5.7%, and this September, it was down only 2.9%.

No one in his or her right mind would have expected November to be a good month for retail sales. Consumers are too worried about their jobs and most have maxed-out credit cards. But, bad is bad and worse is worse.

MasterCard (NYSE: MA) Advisors issued its report on retail sales for the first two weeks in November. Granted, that does not include the Black Friday weekend, but it is still a critical piece of data given the breadth of MasterCard use in stores and shops.

According to Reuters, MasterCard reported that overall apparel sales were down 19%. Electronics and appliance sales dropped a steep 22.1%. The numbers did have a slight improvement in the second week of the month over the first.

What can anyone say? The data about retailing is so relentlessly bad that predicting it will get worse is simply parroting a widely held opinion.

There is another way to look at the data, though. If sales were down so sharply in the first half of last month, retailers may well have turned to extremely sharp discounting to bring customers in for the balance of the holiday season. There is evidence that Black Friday sales were somewhat better than expected and that online sales are doing relatively well.

The bright side of analyzing the data is that, in desperation, retailers may have brought down prices enough to get people back into stores.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

MasterCard Advisors says that holiday spending is growing at about half of last year's 8% increase. The news is not exactly a bright spot for companies like Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT), Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT), or Federated. They need a sharp uptick to drive earnings. Wal-Mart especially needs a jolt.

Online sales growth is also slowing. The rate of increase has been over 20% in years past but Reuters quotes a SpendingPulse executive as saying "this year they're in the teens." This would seem to contradict data from ComScore that shows online spending up about 25% for the holidays.

If the MasterCard data is right, a lot of retailers are going to have rough fourth quarters.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.