After three weeks of central bank meetings, the week beginning Monday, September 21 has almost nothing scheduled. No Federal Reserve decision. No major U.S. inflation or jobs print. A handful of second-tier releases.
That makes the two things that are on the calendar disproportionately important: Costco's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, and Xi Jinping's arrival at the White House on Thursday.
Costco is the consumer read, and the bar is high
Costco Wholesale (NASDAQ: COST) reports fiscal fourth-quarter results on Wednesday, September 24. The stock closed Friday at $895.31, up $1.38, or 0.15%. Its 52-week range runs from $844.06 to $1,096.50 — meaning Costco enters the print roughly 18% below its high, in a year when the S&P 500 is up more than 11%.
What the street expects:
Fiscal Q4 earnings per share of $6.55, up 11.5% from $5.87 a year ago, with estimates ranging from $6.28 to $7.15.
Revenue of $94.9 billion, up 10.1% from $86.2 billion — a demanding comparison.
Full-year fiscal 2026 EPS of roughly $20.58 on approximately $302 billion in revenue.
Earnings revisions over the prior 30 days running 23 upward versus 12 downward.
We already know a great deal about the quarter because Costco reports monthly. For the 16-week fourth quarter, net sales rose 11.3% to $93.9 billion. August alone: net sales up 9.9% to $23.70 billion, total company comparable sales up 8.4%, with the U.S. up 9.0%, Canada up 4.0% and other international up 9.5%. Digitally enabled comparable sales rose 17.9%.
That is the reported version. The adjusted version is the one that matters for the consumer question. Excluding gasoline price changes and foreign exchange, total company comps rose 5.4% in August — U.S. up 5.6%, Canada up 2.8%, other international up 6.8%. Gas price inflation alone contributed about 2.9 percentage points to the reported comp. A later Labor Day cost roughly 75 basis points.
Strip it all out and you get a warehouse retailer growing real comparable sales in the mid-5% range, with worldwide traffic up 2.5% and U.S. traffic up 2.3%. Traffic is the cleanest number in retail because it cannot be manufactured by price. People are going more often.
Three things to listen for Wednesday, none of which are the headline EPS figure:
Membership fee income and the renewal rate. This is the actual business. Merchandise is close to a pass-through; the subscription is the profit engine.
Tariff commentary. Whether import costs are being absorbed in margin or passed to members is the single most useful piece of guidance Costco can offer about the next two quarters.
Traffic versus ticket. Mid-5% real comps built on traffic are healthy. The same comps built on a rising average basket are a different story.
One thing that will not be in the numbers: the DoorDash partnership, and the expansion of Uber Eats delivery to 48 states, both landed too late to affect the reported quarter. Expect questions about them anyway, and expect the answers to be about membership engagement rather than incremental revenue.
For context on how much a single guidance line can matter for a grocer's stock in this tape, Kroger cut its sales forecast by two-thirds and the stock closed up 2.7%. Positioning into the print can matter more than the print.
Thursday: the first White House visit in a decade
Xi Jinping arrives in Washington for a summit with President Trump on Thursday, September 24 — his first White House visit in ten years, and the second meeting between the two leaders this year following Trump's May trip to Beijing.
The market-relevant question is narrow. A tariff truce agreed after the leaders' meeting in South Korea last October is set to expire on November 10. Extending it is the base case among most observers, and it would remove a discrete risk from the fourth quarter. Failing to extend it would put tit-for-tat tariff escalation back on the table between the world's two largest economies, roughly two weeks before U.S. midterm elections.
Other items on the agenda carry less immediate market weight but real tail risk: Taiwan, Iran, semiconductor export restrictions, and artificial intelligence safeguards. That last one is the only area where analysts see genuine room for cooperation. The rest is expected to be continuity.
The semiconductor angle is the one to watch for equities. Technology now accounts for 38% of the S&P 500. The sector has gained more than 20% in 2026 but has lost ground since the start of June. Any change to export rules in either direction moves the largest weight in the index. Chip stocks closed Friday higher for a fourth consecutive session, with Applied Materials up about 4%, Lam Research up 5%, SanDisk up 7% and Seagate up 4%.
Xi arrives with leverage of his own: China is on track to post a $1 trillion trade surplus for a second straight year.
The rest of the week
Monday: China's central bank rate decision; the August Chicago Fed National Activity Index; the UK Rightmove house price index.
Midweek: Global flash purchasing managers' indices for manufacturing and services across major economies — the best read available on whether global activity is slowing as rates rise.
Throughout: Multiple Fed policymakers are scheduled to speak. This is where the week's real information is.
Thursday: Australia's August labour report. Markets assign roughly an 85% probability that the Reserve Bank of Australia raises its cash rate 25 basis points to 4.60% on September 29. Economists expect unemployment unchanged at 4.5% and employment up 20,000 after a 15,800 decline in July.
Why the Fed speakers matter more than usual
The Fed raised its target range on Wednesday, September 16, to 3.75%–4.00% — its first increase since 2023 — to address inflation that has continued moving away from the 2% target. The hike was widely expected and largely priced in.
What is not priced is how many more there are. Chair Kevin Warsh has stated a preference for avoiding forward guidance about the path of rates, which means the market has to assemble its own expectations from individual policymakers' remarks. Fed funds futures ended last week implying roughly even odds of another hike at the October meeting — which falls just before the midterms.
Wednesday's decision was also read as a credibility test, and it passed: Warsh, Trump's own appointee, raised rates over the President's repeated public calls to cut them. Markets generally treat demonstrated central bank independence as a positive, even when the immediate action raises borrowing costs. Rising yields are the cost of that credibility, and the 10-year Treasury ended the week back at 5.00%. The knock-on effects are already visible in rate-sensitive corners: Chevron closed at a 52-week high Tuesday, then the Fed spent Wednesday trying to slow the economy that just made it.
Housing is where it shows up first. Lennar reported fiscal third-quarter results on September 16: net earnings of $284 million, down 51.9% year over year, EPS of $1.19 ($1.23 excluding mark-to-market losses and one-time items), revenue of $8.0 billion, a 15.8% gross margin on home sales, and new orders down 9% to 20,879 homes. Executive Chairman and CEO Stuart Miller said the quarter's earnings "were below expectations" and reflected "the nature of the environment in which we are operating."
Where the tape closed
Friday, September 18, 2026:
S&P 500: 7,650.50, up 12.74 (+0.17%)
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 51,682.64, down 95.40 (−0.18%)
Nasdaq Composite: 26,522.55, up 104.25 (+0.40%)
CBOE Volatility Index: 14.81, down 0.63 (−4.08%)
10-year Treasury yield: 5.00%, up about 5 basis points
WTI crude (October): $99.39, down $2.52 (−2.47%)
The S&P 500 finished the week up more than 11% for 2026 and roughly 2% below its mid-August record. The VIX at 14.81 says the options market is not worried about the week ahead.
What to watch
A light calendar is not the same as a quiet week. The S&P 500 sits about 2% from a record with the Fed newly in hiking mode, the 10-year at 5.00%, and the two largest economies in the world meeting on Thursday with a tariff deadline seven weeks out.
The specific sequence: Fed speakers set the rate expectation early in the week, global PMIs test the growth assumption midweek, Costco tests the consumer assumption Wednesday afternoon, and the summit tests the trade assumption Thursday. Any one of them can be shrugged off. Three of them pointing the same direction would be a trend — and the durability of a business model, rather than its multiple, is what tends to decide who survives that kind of turn. The AI debate that ran through the past two weeks is a version of the same question: should we slow down the AI race is ultimately an argument about how much future growth is already priced in.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.
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