Shylock dreams of his money bag. This dream, about which we get no details, shakes him up so much that he doesn't want to go out to a dinner he has been invited to by Christians. He fears something bad is about to happen, for the dream feels to him like a bad omen.
He rationalizes staying home by saying that the Christians don't really want to see him and only invited him to flatter him. Launcelot, however, urges him to go, because all of his plans to elope with Jessica depend on Shylock being out of the house.
Ironically, Shylock's impulse to stay home is the correct one: the treasure he is about to lose, though he does not know it, is his daughter.
Shylock has had a dream, or rather a nightmare, involving moneybags. To him, they represent a bad omen, a premonition that something terrible is about to happen. As Shylock's moneylending business is the most important thing in his life, we can safely assume that he's worried about the potential loss of his trade.
Despite Launcelot's gentle ribbing, Shylock takes his dream very seriously indeed. So much so that in act 2, scene 5, he orders his daughter Jessica to stay indoors that evening while he's out dining with Bassanio and not to allow any merriment in the house. There must be no bawdy Christian masques at Shylock's place.
But Shylock is right to be worried; Jessica's planning to elope with Lorenzo. Yet it is his material possessions, his house and his money, that he's afraid of losing, when in fact it's his daughter he's about to lose. This is a classic example of dramatic irony, where we know something that a character doesn't.
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