August 20 Hour by Hour: Walmart at 7am, Deere at 10am ET

TL;DR

• Six earnings inside eleven hours. NetEase releases around 6:00am ET, Walmart and Alibaba both report by 7:00am, Alibaba's call runs 7:30am, then Walmart, NetEase and Advance Auto Parts all hold their calls at the identical 8:00am ET, Deere's call runs at 10:00am, and Ross Stores reports after the close with a 4:15pm call.
• Jobless claims and the Philadelphia Fed index print at 8:30am, the same half-hour as the last of the morning reporters settle. Claims ran 209,000 last week, above a 202,000 forecast. The Conference Board's Leading Economic Index for July lands at 10:00am, alongside Deere's call.
• A 319 million share SpaceX lock-up tranche is due "around August 20," on top of the six earnings prints. SPCX closed Monday at $143.34, still $8 above its $135 IPO price. The tranche carries no fixed hour, unlike everything else on this page.
• Five of the morning's reporters land in five different verdicts on this site: buy Alibaba (half size) and NetEase, pass on Walmart's and Deere's shares while liking Deere's volatility, and go long a call spread in Advance Auto Parts. None of that is a single "consumer" trade.
• The S&P 500 closed Wednesday at 7,707.98, up 0.2%, snapping a three-session slide, with the Dow at 53,463.05 and the Russell 2000 up 0.5% to 3,032.94.

The Board

Six companies, two macro prints and an unlock that doesn't need a clock.

Hour by Hour

Time (ET)	What lands	The number to hold it against
~6:00am	NetEase results	Street wants RMB10.2bn non-GAAP profit; Nomura models RMB9.4bn
7:00am	Walmart results	Consensus $0.74, the top of the $0.72-0.74 guide
Before the open	Alibaba results	Group adjusted EBITA fell 84% last quarter
Before the open	Advance Auto Parts results	Guide implies roughly flat comps for the last 36 weeks
Before the open	Deere results	Full-year guide tops out below fiscal 2025's $5.027bn
7:30am	Alibaba's call	Half an hour ahead of Walmart's own call
8:00am	Walmart, NetEase and Advance Auto Parts call, all three at once
8:30am	Weekly jobless claims and the Philadelphia Fed index	Claims 209K last week against a 202K forecast
9:30am	Opening bell	S&P closed Wednesday at 7,707.98
10:00am	Deere's call, and the Conference Board's Leading Economic Index for July
~4:00pm	Closing bell, Ross Stores results	Consensus $1.92 against a $1.85-1.93 guide
4:15pm	Ross Stores call	Its reaction session is Friday, not Thursday

Dates for the rest of the slate are on the earnings calendar. Roughly 319 million SPCX shares become eligible to trade "around August 20" under the day-70 lock-up tranche, per the site's own derived count from the prospectus; it is a date on the calendar, not a scheduled hour.

The 8am Pile-Up

Three companies chose the same sixty seconds. Walmart, NetEase and Advance Auto Parts all hold their earnings calls at 8:00am ET, which means nobody dialing in live gets all three. Alibaba got there first, at 7:30am, and Deere waits until 10:00am, so the actual triage for anyone trading the group is: read Alibaba's transcript in real time, then pick one of the three 8:00am calls and catch the other two from the replay.

That collision is not a scheduling accident worth reading anything into. Companies pick call times independently, and retail earnings week has clustered five names into three mornings all year. It is just the fact of the day, and it is the reason the retail earnings hub exists: one page updated across the whole week beats five separate pages nobody can watch simultaneously.

Five Reports, Five Different Verdicts

Put all five morning reporters on one line and the thing that stands out is how little they agree with each other, even before the numbers land.

Name	Reports	Call (ET)	The setup	Options price	This site's call
Walmart	7:00am	8:00am	$0.74 sits at the top of a guide held twice without a raise	±4.6%	Pass at $116.01; wants the low $100s
Alibaba	Before open	7:30am	Group adjusted EBITA fell 84%; cloud is 74% of what's left	±5.7%	Buy half at $123.81, the rest under $117
NetEase	~6:00am	8:00am	Non-GAAP profit carries a June 30 mark on Alibaba and Pinduoduo, both up double digits since	Not sourced	Buy at $125.12
Deere	Before open	10:00am	Guide tops out below fiscal 2025's $5.027bn	~5%	Pass the shares at $608.85; long the volatility
Advance Auto Parts	Before open	8:00am	Guide implies roughly flat comps for 36 weeks after a 3.5% quarter	±14.3%	Long a $60/$70 October call spread

Walmart and Deere share a shape: consensus sitting on the ceiling of a guide management has had multiple chances to raise and has not. Ross Stores, reporting after the close, is the same setup a third time: consensus of $1.92 sits five cents above the top of its own $7.50-7.74 full-year guide, lapping a 17% comp built on a flat base a year ago. Three names walking into Thursday with the Street already ahead of management's own number.

Alibaba and NetEase are the opposite problem. Neither company's headline profit line is really measuring its operating business that morning. Alibaba's non-GAAP EPS moved because of mark-to-market gains on equity stakes, and NetEase's profit carries a June 30 mark on its Alibaba and Pinduoduo holdings, struck near the bottom of both stocks' 52-week ranges and since reversed by 29% and 11%. Reading either headline number as a verdict on games or e-commerce, rather than on someone else's share price, is the mistake Thursday sets up.

Deere and Advance Auto Parts are arithmetic questions rather than sentiment ones. Deere's own guide requires a fourth quarter 18% above last year's to hit the top of the range; Advance Auto Parts comped 3.5% in a 16-week quarter and told the market to expect roughly zero for the 36 weeks that follow. Both companies are, in different directions, holding numbers the underlying trend does not obviously support.

Jobless Claims, Philly Fed and a Leading Index Nobody Trades On

Weekly jobless claims land at 8:30am ET, the same clock as the Philadelphia Fed's regional manufacturing index. Last week's claims came in at 209,000, above the 202,000 consensus and up from the prior week, though continuing claims stayed under 1.8 million. That is a soft miss rather than a break, but it lands three weeks after July payrolls fell 23,000, so every claims print between now and September gets read for whether the labor market is cracking or just noisy.

The Philly Fed index rarely moves the tape on its own. What makes it worth watching Thursday is the pairing: a regional manufacturing survey and six consumer-facing earnings reports landing inside three hours of each other, which is as close to a real-time census of both sides of the economy as the calendar offers this month.

The Conference Board's Leading Economic Index for July prints at 10:00am, the same hour as Deere's call. It is the slowest-moving release on this page and the one least likely to move a single stock. Its value is cumulative: several months of a falling LEI alongside the 9-3 hawkish FOMC minutes released Wednesday is the kind of combination that eventually shows up in a Fed statement, just not this Thursday's.

The Unlock Sharing the Calendar

Earnings are not the only supply event on August 20. Roughly 319 million SPCX shares become eligible to trade under the lock-up's day-70 tranche, per this site's own derived count from SpaceX's prospectus, the same reading CNBC has used. Against a post-August float near 1.55 billion shares, that is another 21% of tradeable supply landing on the same day as six earnings reports.

The comparison worth making is to the last one. Roughly 911.5 million shares became eligible on August 6 and SPCX rose 6.1% that day, because the feared selling never showed. The companion piece on this unlock argues that one absorbed tranche does not make a pattern, and that a stock already 24% above its post-unlock low, sitting at a psychological round-trip of its $135 IPO price, is a worse entry than the weakness that might show up before a later date on the lock-up calendar. There is no clock time attached to eligibility. Shares simply become sellable at some point in the session, which is one more reason SPCX does not get a row in the hour-by-hour table above.

Ross Stores Closes It Out

Ross reports around 4:00pm ET, after the closing bell, with the call at 4:15pm. That timing means its own reaction session is Friday, August 21, not Thursday, the same lag TJX did not have when it reported and traded the same Wednesday morning.

The setup is a repeat of TJX's, one day later and less friendly. Ross beat its Q1 guide by 23.5% on a comp of 17% built against a flat prior-year base, guided Q2 comps down to 6-7%, and the Street has still pushed the full-year number above the top of management's own range. TJX cleared a bar the Street had cut for it Wednesday and still fell on a light Q3 guide. Ross walks in Thursday with the bar raised rather than cut, which is the less comfortable version of the same trade.

The One-Line Read

Six companies and two macro prints land inside eleven hours Thursday. Three fight guides the Street already cleared, two fight marks on stocks they don't operate, and none of it is one trade on the consumer.