Wall St. tech rally gets a boost from China rate cut

On Friday, Amazon stock rose 6%, Alphabet rose 8%, Microsoft rose 10%, and Apple rose 3%, as the chart below shows. The stock price of the social network giant closed $102.19 per share, up by 2.53%-bringing its market capitalization to approximately $282 billion. Analysts were expecting a more modest, but still huge, 21% revenue pop. CEO Jeff Bezos also forecast sales to improve by as much as 25% in the fourth quarter, translating into a billion haul.

As quarterly reports begin to roll in, cloud continues to highlight the balance sheets while providing the most room for growth. Google X’s driverless cars and Calico’s anti-aging research are now separate companies under the Alphabet umbrella, and investors will start to get a glimpse at their success when Alphabet next reports its finances in January. The division posted a 78% sales gain to hit $2.2 billion and is now running at a $7 billion annual rate.

The maker of digital gadgets is expected to report its quarterly profit late Tuesday – and investors are looking for any signs the stock has been unfairly treated this year. Please note that the iPhone accounted for 63% of Apple’s revenues in the quarter that ended in June, so the company depends a lot on iPhones for its growth. But it’s clear that this business, similar to the retailing operations, is well positioned to capitalize on a major business shift. The day became an emphatic win for the NASDAQ, where so many of today’s quickly rising, publicly traded technology companies call home, because of the impressive results. The euro rose to $1.1112 from $1.1081. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.3 percent to 23,131.76 and the Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China rose 0.4 percent to 3,382.97.

Shares in TalkTalk Telecom Group are dropping by about 10% in London after the company said private data from its four million customers could have been stolen after it experienced a “significant and sustained cyberattack” earlier this week.

“We had plenty of people question how we were going to maintain our target”, said John Stoltzfus, the New York-based chief market strategist at Oppenheimer & Co.

Microsoft is transforming itself into a cloud software business. For example, licensing fees from desktop PC manufacturers dropped 6% over the last quarter. Meanwhile, the PowerShares QQQ (QQQ) is up 11% this month.

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The good feeling about earnings from these three companies lifted other big tech stocks, including Apple (+3.1 percent), Facebook (+2.5 percent) and Netflix (+2.8 percent).