Key Points

Retail sales fell 0.6% in July, the steepest monthly drop since May 2025.

Consumer sentiment came in at a preliminary 51 in August, against a 55 forecast.

Home Depot reports Tuesday, Target and Lowe’s Wednesday, Walmart Thursday.

Your portfolio just closed at a record. The shopper funding it didn’t.

Retail sales fell 0.6% in July. Sentiment came in at 51, and older households showed the steepest drops in the survey.

Four retailers report this week, and what they say about the back half will move your holdings and your purchasing power more than the Fed minutes will.

Your grocery bill already told you half of it.

You get the other half Tuesday, before the open.

The Tape and the Shopper Diverge

Two records in your accounts last week.

The S&P 500 cleared 7,800 intraday Thursday, the 27th record close of 2026, and the Russell 2000 put in a fresh high of its own on Friday even as the broad tape slipped 0.2%.

Here’s what your index funds are currently pricing:

• VIX at 14.25, meaning no fear in the options market
• 30-year Treasury at 5.19%, the highest since 2007
• Retail ETF (NYSEARCA: XRT) down 2% on the week, up roughly 4% this year against the S&P’s 14%
• July retail sales at negative 0.6%, the steepest monthly drop in over a year
• August sentiment at a preliminary 51, below the 55 economists expected

Read those last three together.

Doesn’t add up.

And that gap is where your money sits right now. Your index funds at all-time highs, funded by an economy where the people doing two-thirds of the spending say they’re pulling back.

You own both sides of that trade.

Four Retailers, Three Days, One Question

Home Depot (NYSE: HD) goes first, Tuesday before the open.

The Street wants about $4.71 a share on roughly $47 billion in revenue, against $4.68 and $45.3 billion a year ago. Call it one percent.

One percent.

But the number that matters isn’t earnings. It’s comparable sales.

Management guided the full year to flat-to-2% comps and the first quarter landed at 0.6%, which means the back half has to carry that guide or you’ll hear the guide cut on Tuesday’s call.

Target (NYSE: TGT) and Lowe’s (NYSE: LOW) follow Wednesday morning.

And Walmart (NYSE: WMT) Thursday is the one that reads across your whole portfolio. Consensus sits near $0.73 on about $187 billion, versus $0.68 and $177.4 billion last year. Shares closed near $116, under the $135.16 52-week high, which tells you the market already doubts a raise.

If the lowest-price operator in retail can’t lift its full-year guide, your consumer-exposed holdings have a problem.

Minutes Wednesday, Then a Quiet Calendar

The July 28–29 minutes land Wednesday afternoon.

That meeting held the funds rate at 3.50% to 3.75% on a 9–3 vote, with Hammack, Kashkari and Logan dissenting for a quarter-point hike, the first such trio since September 2016.

Warsh has said less than his predecessors on purpose.

Deliberately.

So the minutes are the only real look you get at how close the hawks came, and they arrive days before his first Jackson Hole keynote on August 27–29. Markets now put September hike odds near 30%.

Reddit (NYSE: RDDT) joins the S&P 500 before Tuesday’s open, which means every index fund you own has to buy it whether you like the valuation or not.

Flash PMIs Friday.

And that’s your week. One Fed document, four consumer reports, and very little else for your portfolio to hide behind.

Where the Week Actually Lands

Four consumer reads and one Fed document. That’s it.

For Band 2 holders watching sequence-of-returns risk with the index at a record, this is the cleanest look you’ll get at whether the earnings underneath that record are real.

But Band 1 accumulators get a different question. Does soft consumer data open a window in names you’ve wanted?

Watch the comps.

Records get made on the tape. They get paid for at the register.

What to Watch

Wednesday afternoon, the July FOMC minutes. Friday, August flash PMIs. Then August 27–29, Warsh’s first Jackson Hole keynote, ahead of the September 15 policy decision.

And the risk to name: crude near $82 with the Strait of Hormuz still a live flashpoint. Another oil move up pushes headline inflation back, hands the three dissenters their argument, and squeezes the same consumer your four retailers are about to describe.