The week ahead will not feature any major economic data releases in the United States — that is, unless one counts the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index and the weekly jobless claims report. Those two may be second-tier releases, but they still carry signal: weekly jobless claims are the timeliest regular read on the US labour market, while the Philadelphia Fed index offers a monthly regional gauge of manufacturing conditions. Even so, there will be plenty of focus on what is happening in the US, and on Wall Street in particular.

After big tech earnings helped to salvage things in the first half of August, it is now over to the major retail giants to take over. Their results should offer much insight into the overall health of the US consumer, with discretionary spending and inflation fatigue coming under heavy focus. The relevance runs wider than any single company's numbers: household consumption makes up roughly two-thirds of US economic output, so what retailers report on demand is one of the broadest reads on the economy available between official data releases.

Here is the list of names to note:

• 18 August (Tuesday): Home Depot
• 19 August (Wednesday): Target, Lowe's, TJX
• 20 August (Thursday): Walmart

As usual, Walmart will be the main one to watch for consumer behaviour patterns, alongside offering up an indication of how the US consumer is holding up at the moment. As the largest US retailer by revenue, with a grocery-heavy sales mix, its results double as a snapshot of everyday household spending. Besides that, Target will also be a focus, as a way to take stock of discretionary spending and how middle-class consumers are balancing their expenditure and budgets — its shelves lean more towards general merchandise and discretionary categories than Walmart's. The rest of the slate widens the lens: Home Depot and Lowe's bring the home improvement, big-ticket, housing-linked side of consumer demand, while TJX reports from the off-price end of the sector.

Apart from consumption behaviours, there will also be heavy scrutiny of the updates from major retailers on supply chain disruptions and costs, as well as inventory management. All of that will feed into the inflation debate, so it is one to keep an eye on — and management commentary on pricing, costs and inventories can offer forward-looking colour that the monthly government releases, by their nature, do not.

But overall, these earnings have to be paired with the 'hard' US economic data released last week — that being the CPI, PPI, and retail sales figures.

The earnings themselves may not be too impactful in general, but after the softer retail sales numbers from last week, it will be important to see whether that is anything more than just a minor hiccup for the US consumer. In turn, that will also factor into setting the tone ahead of the next Fed meeting in September.