هفته پیش‌رو در درآمدها: انویدیا بدون جنسن، عرضه اولیه آنتروپیک و تقابل مصرف‌کننده با فدرال رزرو متمایل به افزایش نرخ بهره

Earnings season is supposed to be over. Instead, next week might be the most important of the quarter for the macro view.

Nvidia reports days after losing its founder. Anthropic prices what could be the largest equity deal ever. And every major US retailer reports into a rate-hike cycle. October CPI came in hot at 0.4% headline and 0.3% core, a December hike is fully priced with a 12% chance of 50 bps, 10-year yields sit at 5.13% and Brent is above $98.

The AI trade gets two tests in 48 hours: Nvidia’s guide on Tuesday and Anthropic’s pricing on Wednesday. Then the consumer gets its turn.

A quiet start, with China doing the talking. XPeng, Baidu, H World and KE Holdings cover Chinese autos, ad spending, hotels and housing in one morning. KE is the one I’d watch. It is the cleanest real-time read on whether property transactions have found a floor.

Tyson Foods is the US name to watch. Protein prices are where households feel inflation after the gas pump. Listen for trade-down from beef to chicken and anything on restaurant demand.

Home Depot reports before the open, with consensus at $3.86 on $42.72 billion in revenue. The numbers matter less than the commentary. Housing turnover was already frozen when the Fed was cutting and now mortgage rates are heading the wrong way. The question for Ted Decker is whether big-ticket projects are getting pushed out again and what pros are saying about backlogs.

Retail sales hit at 8:30 am ET, so you get the company view and the government view within the same hour.

Klarna is an underrated macro report. Buy-now-pay-later delinquencies are an early warning on the low-end consumer. Disney parks and Viking tell you whether the high end is still spending on experiences.

Then Nvidia after the close. The Street is at roughly $109.2 billion against the company’s $108 billion guide, and it’s Colette Kress’s first report as interim CEO. The quarter was in the bag before Jensen left, so the print itself is not the risk, the guide is. Nvidia is the single best indicator of the AI capex cycle, and that cycle has been a meaningful slice of US growth. If there’s any wobble in the outlook, it’s not just a Nvidia problem, moreover, we could find out that the China book is a big part of sales and that could now be gone.

Target, TJX and Lowe’s before the open, and the contrast is the story. TJX is a market darling and can still win when consumers trade down. Target loses when they stop buying things they don’t need. If TJX beats and Target misses again, that is a consumer that’s still spending but increasingly picky, the same pattern as the last two years.

Lowe’s is the cross-check on Home Depot, with more DIY and less pro.

ZIM is worth a look for container rates and what the Middle East is doing to shipping lanes. Tencent gives you China gaming and advertising.

After the close, Helmerich & Payne is the one for the oil market. With crude near $100, are US shale producers finally adding rigs? If not, the supply response isn’t coming, and that matters for the inflation outlook. Palo Alto Networks is a read on the boom in AI security. Copa covers Latin American travel demand and jet fuel costs.

The bigger event that night isn’t an earnings report. Anthropic prices its IPO, with 825 million shares marketed at $70 to $78. The top of the range raises $64.35 billion, and with the private placement the total hits $90.4 billion. That values the company at up to $1.4 trillion fully diluted, down from the $2 trillion floated in September.

The macro read is in where it prices. Top of the range, with Nvidia’s guide intact, says there is still deep demand for AI paper even with the 10-year above 5%. A price at the low end, or a cut, says the opposite. Either way, this is a huge amount of supply for the market to absorb in one night, and some of that money has to come from somewhere. Watch the rest of tech into the pricing.

The fundamentals are not the question. Q3 revenue rose more than 12-fold to $17 billion with a 15% adjusted margin. The question is what investors will pay for that at these rates.

Walmart. Consensus is $0.64, the top of the company’s $0.62 to $0.64 guided range, on revenue of about $187 billion. BofA is looking for US comps of 2.8% ex-fuel.

No company on earth has better data on the global household. Three things to listen for: whether higher-income shoppers are still trading in, how gasoline at nearly $4 is hitting the low-end basket, and what they say about pricing power into the holidays. The stock has run 18% since the last call, so the bar is high.

Walmart will have to share the screen. Anthropic opens on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, and up to 20% of the deal is set aside for retail, so the first print will be noisy. The first trade matters less than where it settles by the close. The precedent is mixed: SpaceX listed in June and now trades near its IPO price after an August slide. A weak debut two days after a Nvidia report would be hard for the AI trade to shrug off. A strong one resets the mood into Thanksgiving.

Alibaba, PDD and NetEase round out the China picture. Deflation and price wars are the theme, with Alibaba’s cloud capex as the AI offset. Williams-Sonoma is the high-end home read, and it tends to be better than feared.

After the close, Ross and Gap report on the low-to-middle-income apparel shopper. Intuit is a quiet read on small business health. Keysight tells you about electronics and test-equipment orders, a capex indicator that isn’t AI.

BJ’s Wholesale closes it out. Membership trends and gas-station traffic are worth noting.

Real consumer spending grew 3.8% in Q3. The consumer has not cracked. But the Fed is hiking, oil is high and long rates are above 5%. This week tells us whether that 3.8% was the peak. It also tells us whether the AI trade can lose its frontman and absorb $90 billion in the same week. Those are the two pillars of this economy, and both get tested by Thursday’s close.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.