Credit Calls

Research evidence excerpt

Credit Calls

J P M O R G A N North America Credit Research

04 August 2026

Tuesday, August 04, 2026

Feature Head of North America Credit

Research and Strategy

HG & HY Retail: Whoa, we’re half way there, whoa livin’ on a tariff (Carla AC Tarek Hamid

Casella, CFA)

(1-212) 834-5468

We’re Living on a Prayer for 2Q26 Retail Earnings . . . a prayer that jobs hang tarek.x.hamid@jpmorgan.com

in there (for the lower end consumer) and that stimulus remains > headwinds. This J.P. Morgan Securities LLC

(lower end) consumer is a hot topic, especially during early-season bellwether

earnings (ACI, KR, WMT, TGT), but is less of a driver for most of our retail

coverage (discretionary retail), where the majority of spend comes from middle Credit Calls is our daily compilation of

and upper-income cohorts. Echoing a few of the themes my colleague Yaakov research reports from High Grade and

Musheyev called out in his Consumer Products Preview, bank earnings and Chase High Yield corporate credit analysts

card data confirm that spending growth and employment remain steady. Lower- and strategists.

income cohorts face decelerating wage growth, sticky rates, and increasing energy-

cost driven inflation, while upper-income households experience equity gains and High Grade Home Page

large cash buffers. In both Consumer and Retail, premium names (discretionary

High Yield Home Pageretail) retain pricing power while mass-market credits (and daily use items) absorb

the elasticity hit first. We’ve seen this play out in the early reporters — ACI, KO, Daily Economic Briefing

MDLZ, PG — where we’ve heard more caution with respect to the lower-end Link to US Equity Research Top Stories

consumer, but continued strength at the middle- to upper-end consumer (events big (updated 7:30am)