According to CNBC, Wall Street was primed for a market rally to end the week as some of the biggest tech stocks — Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet and Apple — reported quarterly results that beat high expectations.
The Invesco QQQ Trust, which tracks the Nasdaq 100 index, jumped more than 1% in after-hours trading Thursday. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, which track the S&P 500, was up 0.9%.
Facebook shares rallied more than 7% after the bell as the social media giant posted revenue growth of 11% even amid the coronavirus pandemic slowdown. The company also issued stronger-than-expected sales guidance for the current quarter.
Amazon, meanwhile, traded 5.3% higher as the company saw its sales skyrocket during the coronavirus pandemic. Apple also reported a blowout quarter, with overall sales expanding by 11%. Apple also announced a 4-for-1 stock split.
“The numbers were amazing relative to expectations,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group. “We’ll see after their conference calls what has been priced in and what hasn’t.”
Google-parent Alphabet also posted better-than-expected results, sending the stock up 0.4%. The stock’s performance was muted relative to the other Big Tech names as the company’s overall revenue decline in its history. Revenues for Google Cloud were also just below analyst expectations.
With those gains, the four stocks were set to add about $200 billion to their total market cap, bringing it to more than $5 trillion.
Big Tech has been the stalwart on Wall Street this year. Amazon and Apple are up 65.2% and 31%, respectively, in 2020. Facebook and Alphabet have risen more than 14% over that time period.
The Dow and S&P 500 both fell on Thursday after the U.S. government released data showing the biggest quarterly gross domestic product contraction on record for the country. The Dow dropped more than 200 points and the S&P 500 ended the day down 0.4%. U.S. GDP contracted by 32.9% during the second quarter, surpassing a record drop from mid-1921.
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