Microsoft and Meta Platforms are driving Wall Street higher after reporting profits for the start of the year that were even bigger than analysts expected.
The S&P 500 was up 1.2 per cent in afternoon trading and heading for an eighth straight gain, which would be its longest winning streak since August. The Dow Jones was up 253 points, or 0.6 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.2 per cent higher. The Australian sharemarket is set to dip, with futures at 4.59am AEST pointing to a loss of 3 points at the open. The ASX added 0.2 per cent on Thursday.
Wall Street is on track to extend its winning streak.Credit: Bloomberg
Microsoft jumped 8.6 per cent after the software giant said strength in its cloud computing and artificial intelligence businesses drove its overall revenue up 13 per cent from a year earlier.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also topped analysts’ targets for revenue and profit in the latest quarter. It said AI tools helped boost its advertising revenue, and its stock climbed 5.1 per cent.
The two are some of the most influential stocks within the S&P 500 and other indexes because of their massive sizes, but they weren’t alone. CVS Health, Carrier Global and a bevy of other companies also joined the stream of better-than-expected profit reports that have helped steady Wall Street over the last week. The S&P 500 is back to within 8.3 per cent of its record set earlier this year, after briefly dropping nearly 20 per cent below the mark.
Still, plenty of uncertainty remains about whether President Donald Trump’s trade war will force the economy into a recession. And even though companies have been reporting better profits for the first three months of the year than analysts expected, many CEOs are remaining cautious about the rest of the year.
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General Motors cut its forecast for profit in 2025, for example. It said it’s assuming it will feel a hit of $US4 billion to $US5 billion because of tariffs. GM’s stock nevertheless rose 0.1 per cent. The automaker said it expects to offset at least 30 per cent of the tariff impact.
McDonald’s fell 1 per cent after reporting weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, even though its profit was slightly above forecasts. An important underlying measure of performance at its U.S. restaurants had its worst decline since 2020, when COVID shuttered the global economy, and McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said consumers “are grappling with uncertainty.”
