For going on three years now, a once-scrappy company based in Santa Clara, California, has been the center of the Wall Street universe. That’s unlikely to change anytime soon — most certainly not in the week ahead, when its earnings report is the market’s biggest event. On Wednesday night, Nvidia is set to release its results for the three months ended in July, in what’s become the most anticipated earnings report of the season during the generative AI boom. The hype has gotten out of hand before — remember the time a New York City bar held a watch party for the chipmaker’s earnings? Nevertheless, for better or for worse, all the other quarterly releases and conference calls crescendo to this one. At some level, it makes sense. The AI gold rush has lifted the market for some two and a half years, and Nvidia’s premier picks and shovels enable it. Let us not forget that other companies exist, including fellow Club holding CrowdStrike , which is one of the leading providers of another essential technology for our era in cybersecurity. It is also scheduled to announce results Wednesday evening. Historically, the market has also paid attention to economic reports that contain potentially market-moving data. One of those will drop Friday morning, when Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge for July is due out. Here’s a closer look at what we’re expecting when Nvidia and CrowdStrike report, and the implications of Friday’s inflation data, which will be one week after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s tacit interest rate cut signal sent the stock market soaring . 1. Nvidia earnings: An interesting wrinkle to Nvidia’s earnings reports is that its largest customers — the likes of Alphabet and fellow Club names Microsoft and Meta Platforms — offer major clues about demand for its chips when they issued their own results in the preceding weeks. When those so-called hyperscalers signaled they’re still spending tens of billions of dollars on capital expenditures, as they did again this earnings season, investors know a significant amount of that money eventually makes its way into Nvidia’s coffers. Remarks from executives on their earnings calls also carry implications for Nvidia, as analysts at Morgan Stanley pointed out in a recent note to clients. “At the end of last year, [hyperscaler] commentary focused much more on supply constraints as a limiting factor for growth,” the firm wrote. “That’s still the case, but more recent comments emphasize a surge in inference demand that’s making it more challenging to install capacity to meet it – a very good signal for the durability of Nvidia’s revenue growth even as Blackwell begins to ship in greater size.” Indeed, right now it is the supply of Blackwell generation chips that ultimately determines just how much revenue Nvidia’s data center business rings up in a given quarter; all signs still indicate demand isn’t the limiting factor. Blackwell is Nvidia’s most advanced brand of AI chips, and it began shipping to customers in small quantities late last year and ramping up from there. It succeeded the Hopper generation chips that entered mass production a few months before ChatGPT launched in late 2022. The consensus estimate calls for Nvidia’s quarterly revenue to be $45.89 billion, with adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.00. NVDA YTD mountain Nvidia YTD As robust as demand for Nvidia’s technology may be, the market is a forward-looking machine with a proclivity to be hard to please — especially for a high-flying stock like Nvidia. As a result, investors need to be prepared for a range of stock reactions. Nvidia could potentially deliver better-than-expected results with above-consensus sales guidance, only for shares to fall anyway because the guidance “beat” wasn’t big enough. This dynamic hurt the stock in February. On the other hand, Nvidia shares rallied after earnings in May because its outlook would’ve surpassed expectations if not for U.S. government curtailing its ability to sell chips to China. China is once again a big variable, but for the exact opposite reason. With the Trump administration granting Nvidia export licenses for China in exchange for 15% of revenue, the company should eventually start to resume booking revenue from that sizable market. It’s just a matter of how much, at what profit margin given the 15% cut, and when. Hanging over it all is the Chinese government discouraging purchases of Nvidia made-for-China H20 chips in favor of homegrown alternatives — is that why Nvidia reportedly told supplier Foxconn to stop work on the H2? Or is that because Nvidia is working on a Blackwell-based version for China instead? Investors will be looking to the conference call with CEO Jensen Huang and CFO Colette Kress for answers on those questions. Some sell-side analysts, whose estimates form the basis of the Wall Street consensus, continue to exclude China in their projections. So, if the company includes some China contributions in its guidance, that could result in an upside surprise to the tune of $2 billion to $3 billion, according to analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets. However, the analysts expect Nvidia will “guide conservatively” around China, just like peer Advanced Micro Devices did. Morgan Stanley shares that view. Here’s what the Street expects Nvidia to report for the July quarter: 2. CrowdStrike earnings: The cybersecurity company’s quarterly results Wednesday night will offer some counter programming to Nvidia. Big picture, there’s been no change to our belief that investors need exposure to cybersecurity companies because their customers cannot afford to cut back on defending their sensitive data, corporate networks and devices. It’s such a big theme that we own both CrowdStrike and peer Palo Alto Networks , which last week reported strong results and better-than-expected guidance. With CrowdStrike’s stock prone to volatility around earnings, keeping that 30,000-foot view in mind can help investors identify buying opportunities when shares sell off on, say, good-but-not-great numbers. In addition to revenue and earnings, the big metrics to watch for CrowdStrike are annual recurring revenue (ARR), which is a key metric for companies selling software subscriptions; remaining performance obligation (RPO), which is a measure of contracted revenue that has yet to be booked; and free cash flow (FCF) margin, which has experienced some pressure as a result of expenses tied to last year’s global IT outage. The hope is, as that incident moves further into the rearview, CrowdStrike’s FCF margin can get back to pre-outage levels. CRWD YTD mountain CrowdStrike YTD It’s been tough sledding for shares of CrowdStrike since early July, which theoretically should keep investor expectations in check relative to a company reporting with a stock near its highs. Then again, CrowdStrike was also beaten up into its early March earnings report and still ended up tumbling in response to the print. A few days later, though, the stock bottomed out — just as we bought the dip — and began a fierce rally. While no one knows if history will repeat itself this time around, we’re prepared for all possibilities. Here’s what Wall Street expects on the top and bottom lines: Revenue of $1.15 billion and adjusted EPS of 83 cents. 3. Inflation: The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index for month of July is due out before the opening bell Friday, and it lands on the heels of Powell’s Jackson Hole speech. At the central bank’s annual confab, Powell hinted that the Fed may need to cut rates as a result of weakening labor market conditions — one side of the Fed’s dual mandate to foster maximum employment and stable prices. While still expressing some concern about tariff-driven inflation, Powell said he now believes it unlikely that tariffs could spark a prolonged period of inflation and would more likely be a one-time step up in the price level. Powell did take a little bit of the intrigue out of Friday’s PCE, saying: “The latest available data indicate that total PCE prices rose 2.6 percent over the 12 months ending in July. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core PCE prices rose 2.9 percent, above their level a year ago.” Powell’s numbers are likely based on information contained in a pair of other inflation reports: the consumer price index (CPI) and producer price index (PPI), which we’ve already gotten for the month of July. While the CPI is the best-known measure of inflation, the Fed prefers the composition of the PCE because it measures expenditures by both consumers and businesses. Among the key differences between the two gauges are how health care and housing costs are calculated. What matters most for investors right now, at least, is how tariff pressures are showing up in the numbers and the implications for Fed policy. But as Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole made clear, the Fed sees greater downside risk in the jobs market. Week ahead Monday, Aug. 25 Census Bureau’s new home sales report at 10 a.m. ET Before the bell earnings: Pinduoduo (PDD) After the bell: Semtech (SMTC), HEICO (CEI) Tuesday, Aug. 26 Census Bureau’s new orders for manufactured durable goods at 8:30 a.m. ET FHFA’s home price index at 9 a.m. ET Conference Board’s monthly consumer confidence survey at 10 a.m. ET Before the bell: Bank of Montreal (BMO), Bank of Nova Scotia (BNX), KE Holdings (BEKE) After the bell: Okta (OKTA), MongoDB (MDB), PVH (PVH), JOYY (JOYY) Wednesday, Aug. 27 Before the bell: Kohl’s (KSS), Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), JM Smucker (SJM), Williams-Sonoma (WSM), Royal Bank of Canada (RY) After the close: Nvidia (NVDA), CrowdStrike (CRWD), Snowflake (SNOW), HP Inc (HPQ), Nutanix (NTNX), Urban Outfitters (URBN), Pure Storage (PSTG), Five Below (FIVE), Agilent (A), Trip.com (TRIP) Thursday, Aug. 28 Initial jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. ET U.S. second-quarter GDP (second estimate) at 8:30 a.m. ET National Association of Realtor’s pending home sales index at 10 a.m. ET Before the bell: Best Buy (BBY), Dollar General (DG), Bath & Body Works (BBWI), Brown-Forman (BF), Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) After the bell: Marvell Tech (MRVL), Dell Tech (DELL), SentinelOne (S), ULTA Beauty (ULTA), Affirm (AFRM), Gap (GAP), Petco (WOOF), Autodesk (ADSK), Webull (BULL) Friday, Aug. 29 Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index at 8:30 a.m. ET Census Bureau’s wholesale inventories report at 8:30 a.m. ET University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey (final reading) at 10 a.m. ET Before the bell: Alibaba (BABA) (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long NVDA, CRWD. 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