Weekly Macro & Micro Outlook: CPI, PPI, Retail Sales, and Corporate Earnings
Major catalysts this week on the macro side include CPI, PPI, and retail sales.
- Consumer Price Index (CPI)
Release Date: Wednesday, August 12 at 1:30 PM BST / 8:30 AM ET.
Consensus Expectations:
Ad · Medium Rectangle 300×250
Headline CPI (YoY): Expected to ease slightly to 3.4% (down from 3.5% in June).
Headline CPI (MoM): Forecast around +0.1% to +0.2%.
Core CPI (MoM): Forecast around +0.2% to +0.3%.
Key Focus: Traders want to confirm that labor market softening is trickling down into broader disinflation. A cooler print cements rate-cut/pause expectations for September, while a hotter print could reopen hawkish inflation debates.
- Producer Price Index (PPI)
Release Date: Thursday, August 13 at 1:30 PM BST / 8:30 AM ET.
Key Focus: Measures wholesale pipeline inflation before costs are passed on to consumers. Following June's final demand decline (-0.3% MoM), markets will monitor intermediate goods, logistics, and supply chain inputs to gauge underlying margin pressures on businesses.
- Retail Sales
Release Date: Friday, August 14 at 1:30 PM BST / 8:30 AM ET.
Consensus Expectations:
Headline Retail Sales (MoM): Expected around +0.1% (vs +0.2% prior).
Core Retail Sales (MoM): Expected around +0.2% (rebounding from -0.2% prior).
Key Focus: Serves as the ultimate health check on US consumer spending resilience after softer job growth. Steady retail figures would suggest a soft landing, whereas a steep drop would trigger growth slowdown fears.
Corporate Earnings
On the earnings report side, it is not as attractive and is looking like more of a macro than a micro narrative this week.
Retail titans like The Home Depot (HD) and Walmart (WMT) report early next week. Tech & Infrastructure
Cisco Systems (CSCO): (Reporting Wednesday, Aug 12 After-Hours)
Focus: Enterprise IT spending, networking equipment demand, and early revenue contribution/order momentum from AI data center networking infrastructure.
Consensus EPS: ~$1.17.
Applied Materials (AMAT): (Reporting Thursday, Aug 13 After-Hours)
Focus: Semiconductor capital equipment demand, semiconductor fab capex trends, and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) packaging equipment orders.
Consensus: High focus on guidance for late 2026 / 2027 chipmaking supply chains.
CoreWeave (CRWV) & Super Micro Computer (SMCI): (Reporting Tuesday, Aug 11 After-Hours)
Focus: GPU cloud compute demand and AI server rack delivery/margin trends.
Conclusion
CPI is expected to be not quite as hot this week, especially after the recent labor market data being softer. It will be interesting to see PPI data and then retail sales, and the big mega-cap retail companies reporting after retail sales data will be interesting to see the health of the US consumer.