Arriving fashionably late usually guarantees that Nvidia earnings are the center of attention. But consumer companies could steal the spotlight this week as markets look to assess the health of the economy amid renewed inflation fears.

It’s not that Nvidia isn’t important. The stock’s recent breakout has put the chip company back among the winners of the AI trade, which has fueled market gains. But even free-spending Big Tech companies have to reckon with the impact of inflation driving up borrowing costs—and that’s an even more acute pressure for ordinary consumers.

Walmart, Target, and Home Depot all report this week. They might provide the best gauge of how consumers are feeling with the average price of gas sitting above $4.50 a barrel. Although tax refunds should mitigate some of the pain, shareholders will be watching to see whether executives signal they will pass on price increases to customers or seek to boost their market share by taking a hit to margins.

Officials at the Federal Reserve will also be paying attention. The Iran war is now 80 days old, and the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed with no obvious pathway to a deal, meaning higher oil prices should stick around for a while. New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh—still waiting to be sworn in—must decide whether the central bank can still assume the effects will be “transitory.” Meanwhile, minutes from the Fed’s April meeting, due Wednesday, will give clues about how his colleagues on the monetary policy committee feel.

Nvidia and its peers have helped keep the stock market cheer going the past few months but AI excitement can’t dominate forever. Watch Walmart and its fellow retailers for a real sense of how long the party can last.

—Adam Clark

Barron’s Live: Join Barron’s Senior Managing Editor Lauren R. Rublin and Senior Writer Paul R. La Monica today at noon when they talk with Stephen Parker, managing director and co-head of global investment strategy at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, which published its Mid-Year Outlook on May 11, focusing on the investment implications of global fragmentation, sticky inflation, and the AI supercycle. Sign up here.

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Retailer earnings this week could offer a glimpse at consumer spending trends as households juggle rising utility and gasoline prices and higher prices for groceries. The reports from Walmart, Home Depot, Target and others come after retail sales for April matched expectations, largely because of the jump in gas prices.

• Back in March, as MarketWatch notes, Walmart executives told UBS that consumer attitudes shift when gasoline costs about $4 a gallon, and shoppers start making substitutions when gas costs $4 to $4.50 a gallon. That’s where we are now. At $4.50 to $5, consumers cut spending.

• Gasoline is right around $4.51 a gallon, according to AAA. If gas prices stay higher heading into the summer, households would have less money to spend on other items, potentially crimping future retail sales. April numbers show retail sales rose 0.5%, but 0.3% without gas stations.

• Retailers haven’t been panicking about it. UBS analysts led by Michael Lasser says higher gasoline costs probably didn’t have much of an effect on Walmart’s first quarter. But collectively, this week’s retail earnings could be a close look at how consumer shopping habits are evolving.

• Mizuho analyst David Bellinger says lower-income shoppers will be in focus. Both Walmart and Target, which reports earnings on Wednesday, are likely to stick with their full-year outlooks, Bellinger says, but the analyst also notes that holding on to the forecast could be out of caution.

What’s Next: Target also has a new CEO in Michael Fiddelke as it attempts a turnaround. TD Cowen analysts said expectations are high, given the 24% run-up in Target’s stock this year. Analysts will be looking at sales of home goods, clothes, and electronics—all things that contribute half of the retailer’s sales.

—Liz Moyer

Florida utility NextEra has been trying to capitalize on the data center energy boom, and a merger with Virginia-based Dominion Energy could add momentum to the effort. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal reported talks between two, with a potential announcement coming.

• NextEra, with a market value of just under $195 billion, is one of the largest power producers in the U.S. It consists of a regulated utility that serves 6 million customers in Florida, and an unregulated unit that is focused on renewable energy, including solar and wind power.

• Data centers thirst for energy, and NextEra has been there to help. It recently signed a deal with Alphabet’s Google to restart one of its nuclear plants located in Iowa. A linkup with Dominion, which has a market capitalization of $54 billion, could help further NextEra’s AI ambitions.

• Dominion serves about 4 million customers in Virginia and the Carolinas, and its business is almost entirely regulated, capping potential for profit growth but also limiting downside risk. Its territory has the world’s largest concentration of data centers thanks to fiberoptic hookups and relatively inexpensive land.

• PJM, the nonprofit that oversees the region’s electrical grid, recently forecast the area’s peak summer electricity load could grow at more than 5% a year over the next decade. The Journal reported that the companies are discussing a mostly stock deal that could come as soon as today.

What’s Next: A combined NextEra-Dominion entity valued around $250 billion could loom over the sector. While renewables have faced resistance under the Trump administration, the outlook has shifted, with Democrats looking likely to gain a majority of seats in the House during November’s midterm elections.

—Ian Salisbury

Jerome Powell’s Federal Reserve leadership featured a robust communications strategy, including lengthy press conferences and more than 160 speeches and statements over eight years. Incoming Chair Kevin Warsh has promised a different approach. It could lead to more investor uncertainty and market volatility.

• Powell also met with Congress more often than his predecessors, according to research from Thomas Drechsel, an economic professor at the University of Maryland. The Powell Fed offered an unprecedented level of what academics refer to as forward guidance, leaving few surprises for markets.

• Academic research largely shows that forward guidance from central banks typically lowers the volatility of near-term interest rate expectations and stabilizes both equity and bond markets, even if it has grown less effective. But financial markets need such guidance, or “hand-holding,” says Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo Global Management.

• Not everyone agrees on the benefits of “Fedspeak,” a phrase dating to former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’ s term. “I don’t think the forward guidance needs to be that explicit,” Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock, recently told Barron’s, adding more volatility isn’t necessarily bad for bonds.

• Warsh, a former Fed governor and private investor, has said he plans to reform the Fed’s communications approach, which could include changes to the publication of the dot plot, the number of speeches Fed officials give, and the post-FOMC-meeting press conference.

What’s Next: A Brookings Institution survey found a third of academics and Fed watchers agree Fed officials should give fewer speeches, but about half find the quarterly economic projections useful. No one is expecting Warsh to implement sweeping changes overnight.

—Megan Leonhardt

Berkshire Hathaway was the most active stock buyer and seller in the first quarter in recent memory, significantly raising its stake in Alphabet and initiating a $3 billion stake in Delta Air Lines. It also appears to have jettisoned stocks once managed by former executive Todd Combs.

• All told, Berkshire bought $16 billion of stocks and sold $24 billion in the first quarter, leaving its equity portfolio with a market value of more than $300 billion, according to a regulatory filing. About $14 billion of that aligns with the roughly 5% of the portfolio that Combs oversaw.

• Some question whether it was a mistake by CEO Greg Abel to dump the stocks since Berkshire has to pay taxes on the gains—its total tax bill related to all its equity sales was about $2 billion. But without Combs monitoring the stocks, it didn’t make sense to keep them.

• Berkshire’s Alphabet stake tripled to 58 million shares, now the conglomerate’s fifth-largest holding at $23 billion, behind Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Bank of America. The stake is more than the roughly $18 billion to $20 billion of equities managed by Berkshire manager Ted Weschler.

• It could have been Abel’s first major investment move and a sign he’s willing to make big investments with Berkshire’s $380 billion cash pile. Then again, it could have been a choice by chairman Warren Buffett, who still has a hand in running equity investments.

What’s Next: The Delta purchase was likely a Weschler pick. The size of it exactly matches the increased authority of about $3 billion as his responsibility went to 6% of the portfolio from 5%. Berkshire also initiated a small investment in Macy’s, possibly attracted to its real estate holdings.

—Andrew Bary