5 issues to know earlier than the inventory market opens Friday, August 16

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

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite sealed up six-day winning streaks on Thursday, advancing 1.61% and 2.34%, respectively. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.39% for its third consecutive positive session. Investors continue to trade up on positive economic data after an ugly jobs report in early August spurred fears of a slowdown. The market rebound has caught momentum, and the major averages are all up between 2.5% and 5% on the week with one trading day to go. Follow live market updates.

Wallets at the ready. Consumer spending last month held up even better than expected, according to data from the Commerce Department, as inflation pressures appear to ease. Advanced retail sales accelerated 1% in July, on a seasonally adjusted basis, topping the 0.3% increase that economists polled by Dow Jones were expecting. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said Thursday prices on groceries and other items are falling, relieving some pain in the aisles for American shoppers. “We have less upward pressure, but there are some that are still talking about cost increases, and we’re fighting back on that aggressively because we think prices need to come down,” McMillon said after the retailer’s second-quarter earnings report.

Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is unveiling economic proposals she would pursue in her first 100 days, including lowering the cost of groceries and prescription drugs, expanding affordable housing and cutting taxes for the middle class. The policies target what Harris’ campaign called “some of the sharpest pain points American families are confronting,” according to a fact sheet on the plans. Recent polling shows Harris has eliminated the advantage that former President Donald Trump held over President Joe Biden.

As Comcast’s streaming service Peacock wades further into sports, it’s seeing some early signs of return on investment. NBC just agreed to pay $2.45 billion per year to distribute NBA games, starting with the 2025 season. Back in January, Peacock aired it first-ever exclusive NFL playoff game, and in the days that followed newfound streaming subscribers stuck around and explored the broader library. “Our highest video-on-demand usage was the week after the Wild Card game,” NBC Sports President Rick Cordella said. “Churn rates among those new subscribers have been lower than the average. Sports fans are not monolithic. You’re getting a whole household to watch other entertainment around what NBCU has.” Read more about why NBC bet big on the NBA.

Disclosure: Peacock is the streaming service of NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.

Three years, $93 million and a cybersecurity sham called M-13. A CNBC investigation into a Russian hack-to-trade campaign and its ill-gotten gains goes inside the operation, in which criminals intercepted nonpublic information on American corporations and traded off the insights before they became public, making millions. Oligarch Vladislav Klyushin was one of 12 alleged Russian intelligence operatives charged by the U.S. government in 2021 with hacking and insider trading. He was released by U.S. authorities as part of a high-stakes prisoner swap earlier this month. Listen to the full story in a new podcast by CNBC’s Eamon Javers, “The Crimes of Putin’s Trader.”

– CNBC’s Brian Evans, Pia Singh, Jeff Cox, Melissa Repko, Kevin Breuninger, Christina Wilkie and Alex Sherman contributed to this report.