1.   Analysts saw the timing partly as an effort to take advantage of the Christmas selling season.

2.   And if the excessively hot weather sticks around, it could hurt the important fall selling season.

3.   And everyone struggled to make sense of the poor selling season, which looked so good at Thanksgiving and then seemed to fizzle.

4.   And retailers are looking at a soft Christmas selling season.

5.   And probably many of the houses on the market in competition with yours are the dogs left over from the previous selling season.

6.   August and September, which includes the back-to-school and fall clothing seasons, is the second-biggest selling season after Christmas, analysts said.

7.   Automakers have kicked off the spring selling season with new models, new accessories, and special prices.

8.   A sparkling economy, record-low unemployment and fatter paychecks failed to translate into the strapping holiday selling season that American retailers were counting on.

9.   A spate of rainy weekends in the spring can doom the most critical selling season of the year.

10.   But in what is normally the peak selling season for soft drinks, the bottler has been unable to meet demand.