Wal-Mart Stores Touches Year High Amid Heavy Black Friday Traffic

traded near a 52-week high Friday after the company crowed about heavy Black Friday traffic and said its online shopping channel showed impressive results. Wal-Mart changed hands recently at $87.59, up 3 percent. It hit a 52-week high earlier Friday of $88.02. Lower oil prices certainly aren't hurting Wal-Mart's holiday shopping outlook. Brent crude hit its lowest price in more than four years following Thursday's decision by OPEC not to cut production. Strategas analyst Nicholas Bohnsack told

that lower gas prices could send the shares of consumer-spending dependent companies higher. Meanwhile, back at Wal-Mart, its Senior Vice President of Marketing Laura Phillips said more than 25 million people downloaded Wal-Mart's Black Friday ad, and 20 million customers used their local store maps on Walmart.com. Scuffles over merchandise reportedly broke out among Wal-Mart shoppers in

, Indiana and in

. On Friday, Wal-Mart was keen to tout its online sales, saying that Thursday amounted to its second-highest online sales day ever - topped only by Cyber Monday last year. Several independent surveys appeared to support strong growth for the online sector;

said total online sales on Thanksgiving were up more than 14 percent from a year earlier, with mobile devices accounting for 52.1 percent of all online traffic. The

said Thanksgiving online sales grew 27 percent. Separately, ChannelAdvisor said online sales in the first 12 hours of Thanksgiving increased 18.6 percent from last year. Wal-Mart recently broke a string of six consecutive quarters of zero growth in U.S. same-store sales on Nov. 19, when it posted a 0.5 percent increase in the third quarter. But Wal-Mart's Thanksgiving weekend isn't without a few hiccups. The United Food and Commercial Workers said it

workers at 1,600 protests nationwide calling for wages at a minimum of $15 an hour and consistent, full-time work.