Days before the start of earnings season, President Donald Trump ratcheted up trade tensions with China, sending the stock market reeling on Friday and scrambling the backdrop for the week ahead. The federal government shutdown is also dragging on. Here is an in-depth look at the three biggest things we’re watching over the next five trading days. 1. Financial earnings: We’re going to have a busy Tuesday, with three of our four financial holdings — BlackRock, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs — all set to report third-quarter earnings before the opening bell. As is customary, hearing from the banks officially kicks off every earnings season. Our remaining financial, Capital One , is set to report next week on Oct. 21. All estimates for earnings per share and revenue are sourced from LSEG, while FactSet provides the consensus for other metrics. BlackRock is expected to report quarterly earnings per share (EPS) of $11.26 on revenues of $6.2 billion. Beneath the headline numbers, we’re going to be paying close attention to organic base fee growth — an essential ingredient to the asset management business. For the first half of 2025, it grew at a 6% clip. Analysts at Goldman Sachs, in a recent upbeat note on BlackRock, said they’re modeling 7% growth for the third quarter. They also expect BlackRock to “set a constructive tone on forward margin expansion,” which is another part of the bull thesis on the company because it helps grow earnings. Adjusted operating margin has been 43.3% and 43.2% in the past two quarters. The third major metric to watch is net asset flows, which disappointed versus Wall Street expectations in the first and second quarters. In the July-to-September period, the Street is expecting $165.7 billion in net flows. Bigger picture, we’ll be listening to CEO Larry Fink for updates on BlackRock’s aggressive push into private assets, particularly around data centers, to capitalize on the AI investment boom. Its infrastructure arm has recently been linked to a couple of major potential acquisitions. With the stock on Friday just below its all-time high, we booked some profits to redeploy into newer names Nike and Boeing . Wells Fargo is projected to earn $1.55 per share on revenues of $21.15 billion. This will be Wells Fargo’s second earnings report since the Federal Reserve lifted its $1.95 trillion asset cap in June, but the first full quarter in which the penalty tied to its fake accounts scandal has been gone. For the Club, an area of particular focus is the bank’s buyback activity and messaging around future capital return plans. “Very, very important,” Jim Cramer said during Friday’s Morning Meeting. Wells repurchased about $3 billion in the second quarter, down from $3.5 billion in the first. We also want updates on CEO Charlie Scharf’s strategic investment priorities, such as its investment banking business, which saw fee growth of 16% in the first half of the year and continued to gain share among U.S. rivals. Considering it’s been a busy few months of deals, we’re hopeful Wells delivers a strong quarter in this department. Finally, despite its push into fee-based businesses that are less at the mercy of the bond market yield curve, Wells Fargo still relies heavily on interest income. That means investors will be watching the bank’s net interest margin (NIM) — the difference between the interest it collects on loans and investments versus what it pays out to depositors — and its net interest income (NII) guidance, which it lowered to $48.02 billion in July. When Morgan Stanley downgraded Wells Fargo stock in late September , the firm cited concerns that its NIM would contract post-Fed rate cut. Goldman Sachs is expected to report EPS of $11 on revenue of $14.1 billion. If investment banking is one character in the long-term Wells Fargo investment story, it is the headlining star for Goldman Sachs in the here and now. The same dealmaking dynamics that will likely benefit Wells Fargo should be in full effect for Goldman. Of course, Goldman’s strong stock performance suggests the market has been pricing in all the positive headlines on merger and acquisitions (M & A) and initial public offerings (IPOs) in recent months. For that reason, reporting robust growth in investment banking fees — consensus as of Friday calls for 15.4% year-over-year increase — is the bare minimum. We want to hear from CEO David Solomon on client engagement levels and the state of Goldman’s advisory backlog, which last quarter he described as “up significantly versus 2024 year-end levels.” While there was some concern that the ongoing government shutdown could throw a temporary wrench in the IPO revival, due to limited activities of the Securities and Exchange Commission, updated guidance from the U.S. securities regulator laid out a path for it to continue. Elsewhere at the firm, Goldman’s trading desks across equities, fixed income and currencies have been firing on all cylinders in 2025, and we’re looking for more of the same there. 2. One more: Moving into the world of health care, we’re set to hear from Abbott Laboratories on Thursday morning. Abbott Labs is expected to earn $1.30 per share on revenue of $11.4 billion. The company has a chance to make up for its underwhelming July earnings report, which featured a cut to its 2025 organic sales growth outlook, with a better print this time around. The health of Abbott’s business in China will be critical. In particular, we want to hear that the Chinese government’s strategy to control health-care costs — dubbed its volume-based procurement (VBP) policy — isn’t proving to be a bigger drag on its diagnostics segment revenue than previously expected. The pickup in volumes that Abbott thought it was going to start seeing in China in the second quarter didn’t materialize, prompting management to move out that recovery into the fourth quarter. Another key segment for Abbott is medical devices, which has beaten Wall Street expectations for 10 quarters in a row, according to FactSet data. It’s home to its fast-growing continuous glucose monitor business — used for diabetes care and, in a newer push, targeted for a health-conscious general consumer — and we want to see momentum continuing there. 3. Washington updates: With Friday’s sell-off on increased China tensions and the Trump administration saying it’s started to fire some furloughed government workers , the market will be monitoring developments on both of these fronts in the week ahead. Trump’s trade agenda had become less of a pressing issue for the markets, compared with the uneasy spring and early summer period, but it returned in a jarring way Friday with Trump’s tariff and countermeasure threats. After the market closed Friday, Trump said the U.S. would impose a 100% additional tariff on Chinese imports starting Nov. 1, in response to Beijing’s new controls on exports of rare earth minerals. China defended those export curbs on Sunday. As for the lapse in federal funding, the market has been operating under the assumption that a temporary shutdown will not materially alter the trajectory of U.S. economic growth, keeping investors primarily focused on the latest in artificial intelligence. But the longer it drags on, the more it may start to matter to markets and the economy via dents to business and consumer confidence. Government workers being laid off — rather than being furloughed and expecting to eventually receive backpay, the typical operating procedure during shutdowns — is another unknown added to the situation. “We are more than a week into the shutdown, and little has changed. Neither side is budging, though there have been some potential compromises floated,” strategists at Piper Sandler wrote in a note to clients Friday. However, one positive for those economic confidence metrics is that “this shutdown seems to be boring rather than alarming the public,” the firm wrote. “Our base case has been the shutdown would last about two weeks, but it now looks like it will last longer,” they added. A piece of positive shutdown-related news is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has called employees back to work on the consumer price index report for September, one of the key inflation reports watched by investors and policymakers alike. The CPI report, originally scheduled to be released this coming Wednesday, is now due out Oct. 24 . The flow of other government economic data remains cut off. Notably, the nonfarm payrolls report for September, which was supposed to be released Oct. 3, hasn’t been released. The market has been getting by without the usual drumbeat of economic reports, instead turning to alternative sources — private equity giant Carlyle compiled an estimated September jobs report , for example — for insights into the health of the economy. But it’s good to hear the CPI report is going to be coming out after all. 4. Dream on: Salesforce, one of the most disappointing stocks in the portfolio this year, has a chance to rebuild Jim’s confidence with its annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Jim will be there with one mission: finding out how much value the enterprise software company’s customers are getting from its suite of AI tools called Agentforce . On Friday’s Morning Meeting, Jim said he told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, “If you want me to stand in front of people and say, ‘Listen, you need to buy Salesforce,’ I need to see clients who have basically had their fortunes changed by it and I need to know how many clients have [cut their reliance on] Salesforce” as a result of AI adoption. It cuts to t he heart of the debate around Salesforce and its peers in the enterprise software cohort: Is AI an existential threat that will erode the seat-based license model they’ve come to rely on — as customers reduce headcount and, potentially, use AI to write replacement programs — or will the software provider’s own AI-enabled tools prove popular enough with customers to drive meaningful revenue growth, offsetting any decline in their legacy business? The “AI is eating software” debate has been raging. Perhaps Dreamforce can help settle it down. Week ahead The government shutdown has delayed the release of some key economic reports that would usually be included in the calendar below. Monday, Oct. 13 Before the earnings bell: Fastenal Tuesday, Oct. 14 NFIB Small Business Index at 6 a.m. ET Dreamforce kicks off in San Francisco Before the bell: BlackRock , Wells Fargo , Goldman Sachs , Domino’s Pizza, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Albertson’s, Ericsson After the bell: Hancock Whitney Corporation Wednesday, Oct. 15 Empire State Index at 8:30 a.m. ET Fed Beige Book at 2 p.m. ET Before the bell: Abbott Laboratories, ASML, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Synchrony Financial, Prologis, PNC Financial Services, Citizens Financial Services, First Horizon After the bell: JB Hunt, United Airlines, SL Green, Synovus Financial Corp., Home BancShares Thursday, Oct. 16 Philadelphia Fed Index at 8:30 a.m. ET NAHB Housing Market Index at 10 a.m. ET Before the bell: Bank of New York Mellon, Marsh & McLennan, Charles Schwab, Travelers, US Bancorp, KeyCorp, Snap-On, United Airlines, M & T Bank, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company After the bell: CSX Corp, Interactive Brokers, Bank OZK, Liberty Energy Friday, Oct. 17 Before the bell: Truist Financial, American Express, Fifth Third Bancorp, Huntington Bancshares, SLB, Regions Financial, State Street, Fifth Third, Comerica, Ally Financial (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long BLK, WFC, GS and ABT. 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