The week ahead will not feature any major economic data releases in the US. That unless you want to count the Philly Fed manufacturing index and the weekly jobless claims report. But even so, there will be a lot of focus on what is happening in the US - in particular Wall Street.After big tech earnings helped to salvage things in the first half of August, it's now over major retail giants to take over next. And this will offer much insight on the overall health of the US consumer with discretionary spending and/or inflation fatigue coming under heavy focus.Here's the list of names to note:18 August (Tuesday): Home Depot19 August (Wednesday): Target, Lowe's, TJX20 August (Thursday): WalmartAs usual, Walmart will be the main one to watch on consumer behaviour patterns alongside offering up an indication of how the US consumer is holding up at the moment. Besides that, Target will also be a focus to take stock of discretionary spending and how middle-class consumers are balancing their expenditure and budget.Apart from consumption behaviours, there will also be heavy scrutiny on the update from major retailers on supply chain disruptions/costs as well as inventory management. All of that will play into the inflation debate, so it is one to be wary about.But overall, these earnings have to be paired with the "hard" US economic data that we saw from last week. That being the CPI, PPI, and retail sales data.I would argue that the earnings may not be too impactful in general but after the softer retail sales numbers from last week, it will be important to see if that is anything more than just a minor hiccup for the US consumer. In turn, that will also factor into play in setting the tone ahead of the next Fed meeting in September. This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.