Monday Tee Up: Here Comes Walmart The focus this week flips back to inflation and the state of the consumer. Key inflation data will come out as will perhaps the most-telling earnings report related to the consumer -- Walmart. Wall Street is wondering if the Fed has been right on interest rates and can still achieve a soft landing and avoid recession. Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 0.6%, the S&P 500 lost 0.4%, and the Nasdaq fell 0.2%. Year to date, the Dow is higher by 5%, the S&P is up 12%, and the Nasdaq is higher by 12%. On the economic calendar, the big day is Wednesday, when inflation data comes out in the form of CPI. In June, CPI posted at 3.0%. Core CPI was 3.1%. We see July matching those rates. On Tuesday, wholesale inflation will grab the headlines when PPI is updated. On Thursday, Retail Sales, Industrial Production, and Capacity Utilization all will be released, and on Friday, Consumer Sentiment and Housing Starts come out. The earnings calendar is winding down but some big releases are due in this week. On Tuesday, Home Depot and On Holding report. On Wednesday, Cisco and UBS Group. And on Thursday, Walmart, Applied Materials, Alibaba, and Deere. Earnings are coming in 12.4% higher this quarter than a year ago (this after some 91% of S&P 500 companies have reported). Expectations were for 8%-12% earnings growth for 2Q. This follows 8% growth in 1Q and 10% in 4Q23. Last week, mortgage rates fell a big 26 basis points (bps) to 6.47% for the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. Gas prices fell four cents to $3.45 per gallon for the average price of regular gas. The Atlanta Fed GDPNow indicator is forecasting for 3Q and calls for expansion of 2.9%. The Cleveland Fed CPINow indicator forecasts 2.74% for August CPI. Looking ahead, the next Fed rate decision is on September 18, with odds at 100% for a rate cut. Of that, 51% expect a 25-bps cut and 49% expect a 50-bps cut. That data is according to the CME FedWatch Tool. There are then two more Fed rate meetings this year, on November 7, two days after the U.S. presidential election, and December 18.

Cloudflare provides cloud-based network services that protect internet apps and help them to run faster -- without requiring clients to add hardware, install new software, or change code. Cloudflare's unified control plane across on-premise, cloud, hybrid, and SaaS data infrastructure environments ensures the security, reliability, and performance of its enterprise customers' external data infrastructure (websites, applications, and application program interfaces); internal networks and devices (identity and access); DevOps; and consumer applications. Internet sites powered by Cloudflare have all web traffic routed through its intelligent global network. The company seeks to relieve clients of the cost and complexity of managing their own network hardware. Some 48% of the company's revenue is generated outside of the U.S. Cloudflare was founded in 2010 and went public on September 12, 2019, at $15 per share.

Cloudflare is a software company based in San Francisco, California, that offers security and web performance offerings by utilizing a distributed, serverless content delivery network, or CDN. The firm’s edge computing platform, Workers, leverages this network by providing clients the ability to deploy, and execute code without maintaining servers.

Cloudflare provides cloud-based network services that protect internet apps and help them to run faster -- without requiring clients to add hardware, install new software, or change code. Cloudflare's unified control plane across on-premise, cloud, hybrid, and SaaS data infrastructure environments ensures the security, reliability, and performance of its enterprise customers' external data infrastructure (websites, applications, and application program interfaces); internal networks and devices (identity and access); DevOps; and consumer applications. Internet sites powered by Cloudflare have all web traffic routed through its intelligent global network. The company seeks to relieve clients of the cost and complexity of managing their own network hardware. Some 48% of the company's revenue is generated outside of the U.S. Cloudflare was founded in 2010 and went public on September 12, 2019, at $15 per share.