$DE

The article previews a relatively quiet week for markets after inflation and Fed-rate speculation. It highlights upcoming earnings from Walmart (WMT), Alibaba (BABA), Ross Stores (ROST), Deere (DE), BJ’s (BJ), and Baidu (BIDU), plus US manufacturing data and Fed minutes. It cites University of Michigan consumer sentiment and recent retail sales, and discusses AI data-center power constraints and dollar drivers.

The week ahead focuses on housing and consumer health. Housing starts and pending home sales are due Tuesday, with July starts up 19% month over month and pending sales down 5.4% in June. Earnings include Home Depot (est. $47.27B revenue, $4.73 EPS) and TJX (est. $15.18B revenue, $1.19 EPS), plus Walmart and Ross commentary.

Investors are set for a busy earnings week focused on consumer spending. Walmart (Thursday), Target (Wednesday) and Home Depot (Wednesday) report quarterly results amid softer sentiment, with University of Michigan surveys showing declines and U.S. retail sales down 0.6% in July. The article also lists earnings from Lowe’s, Home Depot, Deere, TJX, Ross, BJ’s and others, plus Fed minutes.

Investing.com previews the Q2 earnings period, noting stocks are little changed after a record high. Key reports include NVIDIA (NVDA) Aug 26 with $91.9B revenue and $2.08 EPS, Walmart (WMT) Aug 20 with $186.8B sales, plus Salesforce (CRM), CrowdStrike (CRWD), and retailers Home Depot (HD), Target (TGT), Lowe’s (LOW), TJX (TJX).

According to The Wall Street Journal, more than 40 S&P 500 companies reported about $9.6 billion in US tariff refunds over the past quarter, after a Supreme Court decision invalidated part of Trump’s tariff policy. Apple reported nearly $2.2 billion, Nike $986 million, and FedEx about $800 million. Some refunds boosted earnings per share, while accounting varies and some firms plan to pass benefits to customers.

According to ARK Invest’s daily fund disclosures, ARK bought Nvidia and Broadcom shares on Monday and sold about $36.8M of Deere stock. Cathie Wood bought 122,422 Nvidia shares (~$26.6M) and added 39,020 Broadcom shares (~$16.5M). ARK also added Cloudflare and Teradyne, and sold Shopify and Snowflake.

Security firms CloudSEK and Hudson Rock reported that a supply-chain attack involving LiteLLM exposed credentials for about 434,000 CI/CD pipelines. They said compromised LiteLLM versions were downloaded from PyPI during a 40-minute March window, extracting keys and secrets from a 195TB dataset. Firms urged affected users to rotate and revoke credentials, citing related infections from Trivy.

Minnesota AG Keith Ellison told farmers at Farmfest that a July settlement with the FTC and states requires John Deere to provide repair software and resources to farmers and independent shops for at least 10 years. Ellison said the deal prevents dealer retaliation and that his office may pursue other manufacturers. Farmers cited diagnostic software limits and repair costs.

According to Investing.com, Cathie Wood’s ARK ETFs reported Tuesday trades. ARK bought Rocket Lab (RKLB) 292,873 shares for about $23.44M and sold Deere (DE) 32,426 shares for about $19.76M. It also sold Caterpillar (CAT), Shopify (SHOP), and others, while adding Cerus (CERS) and increasing Cloudflare (NET) and Intellia (NTLA).

Bloomberg reports that, based on an ESGAUGE analysis of filings for S&P 100 companies, 61 firms have removed explicit DEI criteria for new board director selection since 2023. It cites Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Starbucks and Wells Fargo. NLPC says boards should still seek Black and female candidates without explicit DEI terms, and notes agreements with American Express, Deere and Goldman Sachs.