At a glance: 2 S&P 500 names report today, both marquee and both before the open — Walmart and Deere close out the week's earnings calendar.

The tape ahead

Walmart closes out the week's retail earnings block before the open, and remains the single broadest read on the US consumer given its scale and its skew toward lower- and middle-income shoppers. Consensus EPS of $0.74 sits at the very top of management's own guide (up 12.3% vs prev.Q.'s $0.66; revenue's $186.82B consensus is up 5.1% vs prev.Q.) — so the bar already assumes the best case within Walmart's own range, not an in-line quarter. E-commerce growth ran above 20% for a fifth straight quarter last time out and Walmart Connect advertising was accelerating into the 40s%; whether that pace held is one swing factor, with any deceleration read as the retail-media trade cooling. The bigger one is tariffs — last quarter's guide explicitly excluded any assumption of IEEPA refunds, and how management frames pricing and margin trade-offs through the rest of the fiscal year likely moves the stock more than the print itself. Coming a day after Target's sharper comp turnaround and a soft Lowe's revenue print, Walmart's own comp trajectory against TGT's traffic-share gains is the read-across the market draws immediately. The 5.03% implied move sits a touch above the 4.23% average realized move on the last eight prints, pricing in slightly more than the stock's own history, against an 88% beat rate and consistently modest surprises (last quarter's beat was just 0.19%). A +13.5%/+24.2%/+11.5%/+6.0% run across the 1-, 3-, 5- and 10-year EPS CAGRs frames this as a business still compounding at a steady clip.

Deere also reports before the open, in what management already framed last quarter as the bottom of the large-ag cycle. Consensus EPS of $4.70 is down 28.3% vs prev.Q.'s $6.55 (normal seasonality — fiscal Q2 is the peak spring farm-equipment selling window, so the sequential drop is not a demand signal) and roughly flat to last year's $4.75; revenue's $10.73B consensus is down 18.0% vs prev.Q. Large ag remains the drag, with management's own guide pointing to North American large-ag industry volumes down 15–20% for the full fiscal year and recovery flagged for next year. The swing segment is construction and forestry, where Deere raised its own full-year sales-growth target to roughly 20% from 15% last quarter on data-center and broader infrastructure buildout demand; a segment beat here would reinforce the read that near-term earnings power sits in construction, not agriculture, with read-across to other names tied to non-residential construction and equipment demand. A 1-year EPS CAGR of -27.8% against solidly positive 5- and 10-year trends (+16.3%/+12.4%) frames this as a cyclical trough rather than a structural decline, and the 3-year figure (-7.4%) is only mildly negative by comparison. The 5.01% implied move sits below the 6.17% average realized move — options pricing calmer than the stock's own history — despite an 88% beat rate and a strong +14.07% last surprise.

Scorecard — reported since we last wrote

Six names carry over from Wednesday's heaviest session of the week, on a genuinely split tape. Estée Lauder was the standout: a 23.0% EPS surprise drove a 16.3% reaction, by far the sharpest move of the six, even as reported EPS fell 57.1% vs prev.Q. — fiscal Q4 is the seasonal trough for prestige-beauty sell-in, and that prior quarter's base was itself inflated by outsized cost-program benefits. Target and Lowe's both beat and both rallied (+4.3% and +2.0%), though Lowe's did so on a revenue miss (-0.6%, against a +4.2% EPS beat and a seasonal +45.2% sequential jump) — a disagreement between the two surprise lines that the market shrugged off. TJX and Analog Devices both beat cleanly on both lines (TJX +2.7% EPS/+0.1% revenue; ADI +3.3%/+2.4%) yet both stocks fell on the print (-4.2% and -0.9%) — reactions running opposite the surprise, consistent with in-line-to-modest beats that guidance had already largely telegraphed. Nordson closed the week's slate after the close with a clean beat on both lines (+5.0% EPS, +4.9% revenue) and followed through after hours (+6.8% AH).

Informational only — not investment advice. Figures are consensus/estimates and option-implied values from public sources and may be revised.