The devil may wear Prada, but nearly everyone else is over at Walmart and Target.

And they’re shopping despite still-high prices for groceries, gas and more. At least, that’s what Wall Street is expecting to confirm this week when a slew of big box retailers share their second-quarter earnings. Analysts estimate that on Wednesday, Target will report a 13% increase for earnings per share and 4% growth for revenue. Expectations for Walmart when it reports Thursday are a 9% gain for earnings and 5% for revenue.

The retail giants have gotten a boost in recent months from value-conscious consumers hunting for deals.

No Improvement for Home Improvement

Walmart has been the clearest beneficiary of consumers more carefully checking price tags, thanks in part to its strong value positioning and its success in attracting higher-income households through initiatives like its Walmart+ membership program, said Arun Sundaram, senior vice president at CFRA Research. Target, meanwhile, is in the early stages of a turnaround under its new leadership team. So far, things are looking up for the Minneapolis-based retailer: Its first-quarter results included its biggest jump in comparable sales in four years.

But up first is Home Depot’s earnings report on Tuesday, with Wall Street expecting a 1% jump in earnings per share and a 4% sales increase. Lowe’s reports Wednesday with a less-than-rosy outlook from analysts of a 2% earnings per share decline (but a 9% revenue jump):

• These home improvement retailers seem to be stuck in limbo. “They are executing well, but elevated interest rates and historically low housing turnover continue to weigh on demand,” Sundaram said. “While remodeling activity has increased in recent years as homeowners choose to stay put, much of that spending has been concentrated in maintenance and repair projects rather than larger, higher-margin discretionary renovations, such as kitchen and bath remodels.”
• July new housing starts data released by the Census Bureau Tuesday should also offer some insight into Lowe’s and Home Depot’s outlooks.

Refund Retail Therapy: Earnings results are just one piece of the picture, as stock moves are often a result of how companies say they expect to perform in the coming months. Don’t expect execs to be raising the bar too high this time around. Because plenty of US shoppers take their checks from Uncle Sam straight to the store come tax season, most big-box retailers likely benefited in the first quarter from consumers spending their bigger refunds this year. (IRS data shows that the average refunds were significantly higher this year compared with last, thanks to changes under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.) As that tailwind fades, and with gasoline prices remaining elevated, management teams may strike a more cautious tone when discussing the outlooks, Sundaram said.

And now, we bring you a message in Norse code.

The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway’s $2.3 trillion Oil Fund, reported last week a record $184.3 billion profit in the first half of 2026, anchored by technology stocks at the heart of the AI boom. CEO Nicolai Tangen celebrated by warning the public that the Fund could one day be worth nothing, invoking nuclear war, biological weapons attacks and a catastrophic stock market collapse. That’ll help with the stereotypes of Scandinavians as cold and gloomy.

Wheel of Fjord-tune

The Government Pension Fund Global, as it’s formally known, reinvests surplus revenue from Norway’s oil and gas sector into global equities, bonds and real estate. It’s the world’s largest single investor, and Tangen is one of the Fund’s most successful leaders, having overseen a doubling in value since he took over in late 2020.

But in an interview with tabloid newspaper Verdens Gang last week, he went, well, full tabloid. The dangers of nuclear war or biological terrorism are increasing because of AI, he declared, and could make the Fund “pretty worthless.” While he said that’s “not very likely,” he pointed out that this century has so far experienced “V-shaped crises” like the Great Recession and COVID, with markets rebounding afterward. He’s worried about a different letter configuration:

• “What we fear is that we will get an L-shaped crisis, where it does not turn around, but lasts for years,” he told VG. A day later, Tangen said the Fund has developed models showing it could plummet 40% to 50% because of an AI stocks crash, debt crises or extreme climate and food shocks.
• Tangen told the Norwegian people to be prepared for a steep drop, comparing the technological breakthroughs and stock speculation in the lead-up to the 1929 crash to today’s AI boom.

‘Werewolf’ Warning: Norway is allowed to use a maximum of 3% of the Fund annually, and it currently provides about a quarter of the national budget. Roar Valderhaug, a columnist for business newspaper E24, praised Tangen for warning the public not to count on that 3% always being worth the $63 billion it is today. But, he added, Fund leaders have a record of crying wolf, and invoking nuclear destruction, biological terror and bankruptcy was melodramatic. “The wolf warning was upgraded to werewolf,” he wrote. Most market experts don’t expect a recession, let alone a depression, any time soon. JPMorgan puts the probability of a downturn at 20%. “The Oil Fund will also probably be lost in the event of a large asteroid impact or a zombie apocalypse,” joked Valderhaug.

COMAC left the tarmac, landed in a different country, and put Boeing and Airbus on notice that it’s coming for them, though it won’t get there fast.

Last week, a C919 aircraft built by the state-backed Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) completed an international commercial flight, departing from Beijing and arriving in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. That’s only some 750 miles, or roughly the distance from New York City to Jacksonville, Florida. But for China’s homegrown aerospace industry, it’s a leap into the stratosphere, marking the first time a COMAC aircraft has completed an international commercial trip. Just don’t start thinking the company is flying as high as Boeing and Airbus. Yet, anyway.

Assembled in China

Milestones aside, it’s still better to think of the C919 as “Assembled in China,” and not exactly “Made in China.” Honeywell has supplied components including brakes and flight control packages. Collins Aerospace has supplied avionics. And the engine comes from a joint venture between GE Aerospace and the France-based Safran Aircraft Engines. The diverse and international supply chain, unsurprisingly, has its drawbacks. For instance, said engine was ensnared by export controls for multiple weeks at the height of last year’s trade war.

The supply chain turbulence has long prevented COMAC’s production capacity from reaching cruising speeds:

• While hard data remains opaque, some reports suggest COMAC delivered as few as 15 C919 planes to customers last year. That’s well short of its goal of 75, and nowhere near the 600 and 793 aircraft delivered by Boeing and Airbus, respectively.
• The company may have delivered only three planes in the first quarter of the year amid more production delays, according to a report by the South China Morning Post. It had previously set a goal of delivering 200 planes annually by 2029.

Not Cleared for Takeoff: Shoring up its production capacity is one thing, but finding willing buyers is another. COMAC has not received approval from either US or European aviation regulators, constricting its market. In May, Bloomberg reported that Chinese regulators were intentionally slow-walking approval for Airbus planes in apparent retaliation for Europe’s aviation regulator taking its sweet time certifying the C919. To paraphrase the old saying: China plans for centuries, Europe plans for long lunch breaks and longer summer vacations.