This Week in Retail: Retail CEO Forum and Apple earnings

As snow piles up across the country, it’s going to be a relatively quiet week in retail. The World Economic Forum is over, and the Supreme Court won’t be issuing any new rulings until next month, meaning no indication until then on whether it will deem Trump’s tariff regime constitutional or not.

That being said, here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on in retail this week:

In industry gatherings: The Retail Industry Leaders Association kicked off its Retail CEO Forum in Ojai, California, on Saturday, and it will run through Tuesday. The invitation-only event provides a space for top executives to connect and hold candid conversations about the state of the industry. Featured speakers include Wayfair CEO Niraj Shah and Best Buy CEO Corie Barry.

In webinars: The Association of Retail and Consumer Professionals is hosting a webinar on Tuesday to help retailers employ technology to address stockouts, which have sparked negative reactions from consumers across the country. Per the event description, these include “optimizing the on-hand inventory via rebalanced displays, rotating back stock, or other merchandising adjustments.” For this webinar, Troy Siwek, general manager of gStore by GreyOrange, will talk for 20–25 minutes and then stick around for a Q&A session.

In earnings: The bulk of Q4 retail results are still a few weeks out, but in the meantime, a number of tech giants, credit card companies, logistics firms, and at least one major quick service restaurant are getting the ball rolling on earnings season. On Tuesday, it’s all logistics with UPS and freight rail company Union Pacific. On Wednesday, Meta, Tesla, and Microsoft are on deck. Starbucks is also reporting that day, and some on Wall Street are expecting a decline in earnings. Finishing out the week is Apple on Thursday. Many investors are expecting the tech giant to show earnings growth, as the company recently surpassed Samsung in smartphone sales after 14 years in second place.