5 issues to know earlier than the inventory market opens Monday, August 19

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

Stock futures were largely flat in premarket trading Monday after a banner week for the markets last week. The S&P 500 gained 3.9% last week, its best week of 2024, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite gained 2.9% and 5.2%, respectively. “Much like some of the last recoveries that we’ve had after pullbacks, this was a little game of ‘put the money back where it came from,'” SoFi’s Liz Young Thomas told CNBC last week. Follow live market updates.

Investors will get another look at the health of the American consumer this week, with more retail earnings reports on deck. The headliner this week is Target, due to report results on Wednesday before the market opens. There’s also a handful of software companies set to report, as well as embattled home fitness company Peloton. Here are the key reports:

• Monday: Palo Alto Networks (after the bell)
• Tuesday: Lowe’s (before the bell)
• Wednesday: Target, Macy’s, TJX Companies (before the bell); Snowflake, Zoom Video, Urban Outfitters (after the bell)
• Thursday: Peloton (before the bell); Workday, Ross (after the bell)

A judge on Friday temporarily blocked the sports streaming venture by Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox. The service, called Venu and recently priced at $42.99 per month, was set to launch in time for the start of the NFL season. The injunction comes in response to a lawsuit by Fubo TV, which claimed the joint venture was anticompetitive and would upend its streaming business. The companies behind Venu said they would appeal the judge’s decision.

China says it’s struck an agreement with the U.S. to cooperate on matters of financial stability. A readout from the People’s Bank of China says representatives for each country signed an agreement during a meeting of the U.S.-China Financial Working Group in Shanghai last week. The conversation was “professional, pragmatic, candid and constructive,” according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese statement, and included topics spanning capital markets, cross-border payments and the two nations’ monetary policy, according to the PBOC. A readout from the U.S. Treasury Department on the meeting wasn’t immediately available.

Starbucks has a mobile app problem, and its incoming CEO Brian Niccol may have the answer. The former Chipotle chief executive oversaw the burrito chain’s booming digital operations, which have benefitted in part from enticing promotions and separate lanes for preparing mobile orders. In Chipotle’s most recent quarter, online orders accounted for 35% of revenue. At Starbucks, digital orders aren’t quite the same boon. Detractors have cited crowded cafes and long wait times stemming from an overwhelming number of mobile orders as among the operational challenges that are weighing down Starbucks’ sales. Niccol’s task once he takes the coffee chain chief role: fix what longtime CEO Howard Schultz recently called Starbucks’ “biggest Achilles heel.”

– CNBC’s Samantha Subin, Lillian Rizzo, Evelyn Cheng and Amelia Lucas contributed to this report.