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April 26, 2024 – 7:08 AM PDT
(Reuters) – Wall Street’s main indexes advanced on Friday as most megacap growth stocks rose after robust quarterly results from Alphabet pushed its market value over $2 trillion, while an in-line inflation reading calmed interest rate jitters.
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Alphabet (GOOGL.O) jumped 10.8% to a record high after the Google-parent announced its first-ever dividend, a $70 billion stock buyback and beat estimates for first-quarter results.
The share surge led to the search giant’s market value briefly topping $2 trillion on an intraday basis.
Lifting sentiment further, Microsoft (MSFT.O) gained 2% on beating Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue and profit, driven by gains from AI adoption across its cloud services.
Other growth stocks also rose on the results, with Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Nvidia (NVDA.O) up 1.7% and 1.6%, respectively.
Aiding further gains, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 0.3% in March, in line with estimates by economists polled by Reuters. In the 12 months through March, PCE inflation advanced 2.7% against expectations of 2.6%.
Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the PCE price index increased 0.3% last month against expectations of a 0.3% increase. Annually, it came in at 2.8% versus forecasts of 2.7%.
“This is a good number in (the sense) that it doesn’t hurt the confidence of the Fed that inflation’s moving in the right direction, but it doesn’t necessarily add to their confidence (that) it’s going towards their 2% target on a sustainable basis,” said Steve Wyett, chief investment strategist at BOK Financial.
Money markets priced in a firmer chance of a rate cut in September after the data.
Yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell after the data, last standing at 4.6506%
The upbeat earnings across several sectors this week have propped up Wall Street’s main stock indexes for weekly gains, with the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) looking to snap three weeks of losses while the Nasdaq (.IXIC) is set to end four straight weeks of declines.
Adjusted blended earnings for the first quarter are estimated to grow by 8.7% on a year-on-year basis versus 7.4% growth seen on Thursday, according to LSEG data.
At 9:43 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) was up 94.39 points, or 0.25%, at 38,180.19, the S&P 500 (.SPX) was up 36.08 points, or 0.71%, at 5,084.50, and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) was up 207.74 points, or 1.33%, at 15,819.50.
Seven of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors were trading higher, with communication services (.SPLRCL) jumping 4.6%, while energy (.SPNY) led losses with a 1.1% fall.
Snap (SNAP.N) surged 24.4% after the social media firm beat first-quarter estimates for quarterly revenue and user growth. Shares of Pinterest (PINS.N) also rose 4.1%.
Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) lost 2.8% after the largest U.S. oil company missed analysts’ estimates with a 28% year-on-year drop in first-quarter profit.
Intel (INTC.O) dropped 12.3% on forecasting second-quarter revenue and profit below estimates as it faces weak demand for its traditional data center and PC chips and trails in the surging market for AI components.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 3.01-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 2.14-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded seven new 52-week highs and eight new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 18 new highs and 30 new lows.
Reporting by Shristi Achar A and Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel