The Wall Street staged a strong recovery on Thursday after the previous session's Fed-induced crash as indices received a fresh tech boost from Microsoft's strong earnings and AI-linked growth.
S&P 500 opened 1% higher at 7,385.30, tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index surged 1.54% to 24,819.37, and Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.64% to 51,918.60 at open.
Microsoft Corp. soared over 14% few minutes after the opening bell to a high of $445.73. The company posted $90.01 billion, exceeding the expected $87.62 billion.
The company's main cloud business Azure passed the AI valuation test as it grew 43% which was also ahead of market expectations. Net income of $35.77 billion, or $4.81 per share, increased from $27.23 billion, or $3.65 per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Microsoft said it accrued a gain of $3.2 billion gain from its investment in artificial intelligence lab Anthropic and lower-than-expected costs tied to its first-ever voluntary retirement programme.
On the other end of the tech spectrum is Meta Platforms, whose stock plunged over 10% to a low of $524.49 after it missed wall street expectations on revenue forecast and earnings.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led tech giant posted a 91% dive in its net cash flow to $784 million, at the behest of consistent AI related investments. It guided a quarterly of between $61 billion and $64 billion, or $62.5 billion at the middle of the range. Analysts were expecting guidance of $63.15 billion, according to LSEG.
Microsoft's earnings shielded the US stock market indices from geo-political turmoil on the Iran front after the recent flare up. However, crude oil prices eased slightly despite exchange of strikes between Washington and America. Brent crude futures traded 1.15% lower at $89.73 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate was down 0.8% to $83.78 per barrel.
The sectoral performance was largely negative, with seven out of the 11 indices trading in the red while four traded in the green. Gains were led by the consumer discretionary sector, while communications services led the decline.
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