📆 Friday, April 26
► European stocks surged today, led by the technology sector following impressive earnings results from Microsoft and Alphabet. The Stoxx Europe 600 rose by 0.6%, marking its first weekly gain in a month. Strong earnings from Microsoft and Alphabet spurred gains, with the tech, miners and consumer cyclicals leadings the gains. Despite a strong overall market, Anglo American dipped after rejecting the major $39 billion takeover bid from the BHP group. Thyssenkrupp AG surged more than 10% after Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky's EP Corporate Group agreed to take a 20% stake in the German company's struggling steel division.
► US equity futures showed optimism, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures up by 0.7% and 1% respectively, reacting positively to impressive results from tech giants Microsoft and Alphabet, which followed Meta's strong Q1 results. This optimism follows a robust earnings showcase from tech giants, with Microsoft (+3.8% pre market) enhancing its cloud and AI revenue streams and Alphabet (+11% pre market) smashing revenue estimates and initiating a dividend. Microsoft announced Q3 earnings of $2.94 per share, surpassing the $2.82 expected, with revenues up 17% to $61.86 billion, driven by a 31% growth in its Azure cloud services. Alphabet reported earnings of $1.89 per share against forecasts of $1.51, with total revenues soaring to $80.54 billion, fueled by robust ad revenue from YouTube and gains in Google Cloud. Despite a strong earnings season overall, market reactions have been mixed, with some firms seeing gains while others faced harsher penalties for not meeting expectations. Markets also await the release of US PCE price index data later today.
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