The S & P 500 is riding back-to-back winning weeks into an important stretch of retail earnings and a much-anticipated Federal Reserve retreat. Indeed, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s keynote address and a trio of Club earnings reports are the biggest events on our radar in the week ahead. Outside the portfolio, Walmart also reports, and all of Wall Street will be paying close attention to the retail giant’s numbers and management commentary as well. Here’s a closer look at what we’re expecting. 1. Powell’s speech: The main event of the week comes on its final trading day. On Friday morning, Powell is set to deliver his annual address at the central bank’s annual confab in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Officially known as the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, the conference is not home to formal interest rate policy decisions, but it can be a place where the Fed’s leader hints that changes could be coming soon. Such was the case last year, when Powell was clear-cut in his messaging. “The time has come for policy to adjust,” Powell said, and a few weeks later, the Fed issued the first of three rate cuts that brought its benchmark lending rate down by one percentage point by year-end. It has kept rates steady throughout 2025. While the market is widely expecting the Fed to start cutting again in September, it’s unclear whether Powell’s keynote speech on Friday will tee that up. Instead, some experts, including economists at Wells Fargo, expect it to be primarily about providing an update on the Fed’s broader monetary policy framework review — a process undertaken every five years. When it was completed in 2020, the Fed announced a new approach to ensuring price stability that would allow for inflation to run moderately above its 2% target if the preceding years saw inflation undershooting its goal. This new framework — dubbed flexible average inflation targeting — was born out of the prolonged period after the financial crisis when inflation was well below the Fed’s desired level. Much has changed in the world and economy since August 2020. And while inflation has come down from the four-decade highs seen in 2022, it’s still running well above 2%, and the Fed is worried that tariffs could add to the inflationary pressures. Accordingly, Wells Fargo expects that Powell will declare that the Fed’s policymaking arm is “moving to a framework that will hold up more robustly to varied macroeconomic environments,” eschewing the flexible average targeting in favor of “something similar to the previous model of a simple 2% inflation target.” Wells Fargo said Powell may also provide updates on the Fed’s approach to achieving maximum employment, the other side of its dual mandate. 2. Earnings: We’ll hear from three Club holdings in the week ahead, including two retailers. Palo Alto Networks kicks off the action Monday night with its fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter report. We recently added to our position in the cybersecurity stock on the belief that its steep sell-off on concerns about its CyberArk acquisition were overblown. Some on Wall Street are coming around to our view, evidenced by a pair of recent analyst upgrades. Nevertheless, it will be a big topic of conversation on Monday night’s earnings call. As for the actual results, Wells Fargo expects Palo Alto to report a solid quarter but expressed some concern about what management’s fiscal 2026 guidance — specifically for the key metrics of remaining performance obligation (RPO) and annual recurring revenue (ARR) — could have in store. Palo Alto is certainly no stranger to earnings sell-offs, and a conservative guide this time around could result in a similar initial market reaction. But recent history suggests they’re buying opportunities rather than thesis-altering breakdowns. Palo Alto is expected to report revenue of $2.5 billion and adjusted earnings per share of 88 cents. In a busy week of retail earnings, Home Depot reports before Tuesday’s opening bell. Like with Palo Alto, there will be a planned acquisition to talk about: Home Depot announced in late June a deal to buy building materials distributor GMS Inc. , deepening its strategic push to serve professional contractors at a time of sluggish activity from do-it-yourself customers. The DIY business has suffered from the depressed housing market, driven by elevated borrowing costs squeezing would-be buyers and would-be sellers hesitant to give up ultra-low mortgage rates locked in during the Covid-19 pandemic. Housing turnover is a big driver of Home Depot’s sales. A glimmer of hope, though, is that the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has trended down lately . We’ll see if management has noticed any changes in customer behavior as a result. The numbers that Home Depot releases Tuesday will cover the spring and summer gardening season — a crucial sales window that Jim Cramer has dubbed the company’s “Christmas.” The market is looking for a companywide same-store sales increase of 1.3% in the July quarter, according to FactSet. That would mark a significant accelerate from the 0.3% drop seen in the February-to-April period. Investors also will be looking for any tariff-related hit to margins after executives said in May they expected to “generally maintain” current prices. Home Depot is projected to report earnings per share of $4.72 on revenue of $45.37 billion. TJX Companies rounds out the week of Club earnings on Wednesday, and our overarching focus is on how well the company’s store brands — TJ Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods and Sierra — attracted customers at a time when the health of the U.S. economy is under the microscope. At the heart of why we own TJX is its reputation for selling quality merchandise at hard-to-beat prices. With all the headlines about the potential inflationary impacts of tariffs, TJX finds itself in the sweet spot as an off-price retailer. Not only because its low prices appeal to inflation-wary consumers, but also because its business model doesn’t rely on a lot of direct importing, minimizing its tariff exposure relative to, say, a department store rival. It’s not entirely above the fray, though, and management said in May the quarter that it reports Wednesday will be the one “most impacted” by tariffs due to purchase commitments before the duties were implemented. Consequently, how TJX’s margins stack up versus expectations for both the reported quarter and in its current-quarter guidance will be important. Wall Street expects TJX to deliver total same-store sales growth of 3.1%, which would mark a modest acceleration from the prior quarter, according to FactSet. Overall revenues are expected to be $14.17 billion alongside earnings per share of $1.01. There are a few big non-Club earnings to highlight before we preview our names: Target on Wednesday, Walmart on Thursday and BJ’s Wholesale , a rival of Costco, on Friday. It’s a bit quiet on the tech earnings front, with the exception of semiconductor firm Analog Devices and enterprise software provider Workday . Week ahead Monday, Aug. 18 After the bell earnings: Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Fabrinet (FN), XP Inc (XP) Tuesday, Aug. 19 Before the bell: Home Depot (HD), Medtronic (MDT), Amer Sports (AS), XPeng (XPEV), Viking Holdings (VIK) After the bell: James Hardie (JHX), ZTO Express (ZTO), La-Z-Boy (LZB) Wednesday, Aug. 20 Before the bell: TJX Companies (TJX), Target (TGT), Estee Lauder (EL), ZIM Integrated (ZIM), Analog Devices (ADI), Baidu (BIDU), Dycom Industries (DY) After the bell: Toll Brothers (TOL), Coty (COTY) Thursday, Aug. 21 Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium begins Before the bell: Walmart (WMT), Canadian Solar (CSIQ), Bilibili (BILI) After the bell: Zoom Communications (ZM), Workday (WDAY), Intuit (INTU), Ross Stores (ROST) Friday, Aug. 22 Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech at 10 a.m. ET Before the bell: BJ’s Wholesale (BJ) (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long PANW, TJX, COST, and HD. See here for a full list of the stocks.) 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