Three trading days after TJX raised guidance and Target sold off five percent on the same Tuesday morning, the spread is still the only fuel-passthrough story the spring earnings calendar has produced. No second retailer named the line on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. [1]

The paper's Wednesday standard read the split tape as the first corporate-disclosed receipt of the Hormuz fuel premium — TJX flagging higher transportation and shipping inputs in its fiscal 2027 outlook while every other retailer printed without naming the variable. TJX closed Friday up about three percent on the week against a flat S&P 500; Target finished within a percent of its post-print Tuesday low. The off-price share-of-wallet narrative is now the running headline. [1]

Lowe's is on the calendar next week; Best Buy follows after Memorial Day. Either company naming fuel passthrough in its forward outlook would convert the TJX line from idiosyncratic to a category — a second receipt the retail-economics frame needs to advance. The absence is itself the artifact. The $4.56 AAA national average held all week without a second retail confirmation, and on the bond-market side, the 30-year ranged between 5.07 and 5.19 percent on Warsh's first day. Two of the three tapes the paper has been counting now hold; the third one is still a sample of one. [1]

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York