Nvidia reports quarterly results after the close on Tuesday, Nov. 17, the first report with Colette Kress as interim chief executive, CNBC reported. A day later, Anthropic is expected to price its initial public offering, with trading set to begin Thursday, according to CNBC. Between them sit earnings from the largest U.S. retailers and the government's October retail sales report.

What guidance measures

A quarterly report has two parts. One is the quarter that just ended. The other is guidance, management's own estimate of what comes next. The result is then measured against two numbers: the company's guide and analysts' estimates.

Nvidia had guided to $108 billion in revenue for the quarter, and the Street expects about $109.2 billion, according to investingLive. That is a gap of about $1.2 billion, or roughly 1 percent of the company's figure. The consequence is narrow: a result near the guide tells readers the business performed as management said it would. It does not settle who runs the company.

That question remains open. CNBC described Ian Buck, an Nvidia vice president, as "emerging as an early favorite" for the permanent job. Reuters, citing the Financial Times, reported that Nvidia's board has approached Arm Holdings Chief Executive Rene Haas about succeeding Jensen Huang.

What an IPO range measures

An IPO price range is the band within which a company and its underwriters propose to sell shares. The final price, set the night before trading, fixes what the company receives. It is not yet a market price.

Anthropic's Nov. 10 release set the terms. It is offering 825,000,000 Class A shares at an expected $70 to $78 each. Of those, 801,351,354 come from Anthropic and 23,648,646 from existing stockholders. The underwriters have a 30-day option to buy up to 123,750,000 more. The company has applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol "ANT."

At the top of the range, the offering would raise $64.35 billion, investingLive calculated, and $90.4 billion including a private placement. CNBC reported that valuation estimates have been lowered to about $1.2 trillion, from $2 trillion earlier in the fall. Bloomberg reported that the offering is roughly six times oversubscribed, according to Kiplinger.

The link between demand and price is only a link. Subscription figures describe orders before pricing. The price that matters for the company is the one set Wednesday night.

Retailers and the consumer

Home Depot and Disney report Tuesday. Target, Lowe's and TJX follow Wednesday, and Walmart reports Thursday, according to CNBC's calendar. Analysts expect Home Depot to earn $3.86 a share on $42.72 billion in revenue, and Walmart $0.64 a share on about $187 billion, against the company's own guidance of $0.62 to $0.64, investingLive reported.

The Census Bureau's October retail sales report arrives Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expect a 0.2 percent increase, after 0.8 percent the month before, MarketScreener reported. The Federal Reserve publishes minutes of its October meeting Wednesday at 2 p.m.

Shenzhen

President Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to hold their first trilateral meeting at the APEC summit in Shenzhen on Nov. 18-19, Al Jazeera reported. The White House confirmed Trump's attendance on Friday and says the talks will focus on nuclear proliferation. A senior administration official told Reuters, "we do not expect to get any kind of agreement," according to Al Jazeera.