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While some stores were open on Thursday and many retailers have offered "Black Friday" deals for weeks, shoppers still lined up late Thursday and early Friday for the annual day-after-Thanksgiving bargain hunt.

Black Friday is a term adopted by retailers to refer to the time of year when their businesses move into the black, or turns a profit. This year their aim is expected to be about keeping sales momentum that has picked up modestly this year as the economy recovers.

Shoppers were disappointed in some of the offers they could see, although they were still waiting in line for hours before they could get in the door.

"I'm looking at the TV and it says save $70 and I'm like, come on, you've got to be kidding," said Sanjay Patil, as he waited outside a Best Buy Co Inc in Princeton, New Jersey, along with about 50 other bargain hunters before midnight, even though the electronics retailer said stores open at 5 a.m.

"If it's Black Friday, it has to be 100 or 120 bucks savings minimum."

Others were anticipating the bargains they hoped to get. Nandini Ramkissoon, 19, staked out a spot near the stacks of $69 Blu-ray Disc players and $198 HDTVs set to go on sale at 5 a.m. (1000 GMT) inside a Wal-Mart in Secaucus, N.J.

"Wal-Mart is pretty good because they're letting their customers inside before time, and it's really cool," Ramkissoon said.

She and her parents arrived at 7 p.m. on Thursday, 10 hours early, to make sure they could get the TV they wanted.

Wal-Mart opened many of its U.S. discount stores on Thanksgiving Day and the doors stayed open overnight, a tactic it adopted after an employee was trampled to death two years ago on "Black Friday."

READY TO SHOP

Consumers, whose spending accounts for about 70 percent of the U.S. economy, appeared to be in the mood to shop. On Wednesday, the government reported a 0.3 percent increase in personal spending in October, compared with the previous month.

Other signs that the economy might be gaining steam include a two-year low in a closely watched measure of jobless benefits.

"I'm spending more this year than last year," said George Lum, a 30-year-old hospital worker, as he sat in a lawn chair outside the Target Corp in Princeton, 4-1/2 hours before its 4 a.m. opening. He was hoping to buy a 40-inch Westinghouse flatscreen LCD high-definition television for $298.

The National Retail Federation forecast that as many as 138 million people would go to stores this weekend. The industry trade group also forecast a 2.3 percent increase in sales during November and December, up from a 0.4 percent increase a year earlier. Other forecasts call for even greater increases.