Specialist James Sciulli, right, works with traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, October 23, 2015. Strong quarterly earnings from several big-name technology companies helped rally the market. S&P 500 futures gained 2 points, or 0.11% to 2055, while Nasdaq 100 futures added 17 points, or 0.36% to 4569.
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The S&P 500 advanced 16 points, or 0.8%, to 2,069, turning positive for the year as it erased most of the losses that sent it to correction territory in late August. “There’ve been a lot of worries out there, and yet there are a few very strong tail winds the market can’t ignore, and we’re seeing that this morning with tech earnings”.
On Thursday, a series of premier technology brands-namely Google/Alphabet (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN)-revealed their third quarter earnings reports, detailing each company’s financials to the public. On the news, Microsoft’s shares rose as much as 9.8 percent to $52.75 in after-hours trading, which for reference is their highest mark since March 2000 when Microsoft owned a vastly larger sway of both the commercial and enterprise computer market. Alphabet climbed $51.59, or 7.6 percent, to $732.73.
It was a high tech Friday on Wall Street. The stock added $6.09 to $81.03. The company reported earnings of $0.67 per share on $21.7 billion in revenue. The stock lost $6.55 to $12.64. The company had no specific news today, but dazzling earnings from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft lifted all tech stocks today. This gave Alphabet a market cap of about US$522.5bil (RM2.21tril), cementing its position as the second-most valuable stock after Apple Inc, which is worth about US$660bil (RM2.79tril). The JPX-Nikkei Index 400 rose 2.1 percent to close at 13,878.26.
China’s central bank that came on the heels of a promise of more easing measures from European Central Bank President Mario Draghi (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ecbs-draghi-opens-door-for-more-qe-in-december-2015-10-22)just a day earlier.
Among other gainers, Procter & Gamble rose 2.9 percent to $77.03 after its profit beat estimates. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.3 percent.
Crude oil in New York slid 0.80 cents to $44.58 a barrel and gold fell $3.80 to $1,162.25 an ounce. The contract rose 18 cents to settle at $45.38 a barrel on Thursday.
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PulteGroup Inc.’s quarterly profit fell more than a fifth as the No. 3 USA homebuilder sold fewer homes because of construction delays from labor shortages and recorded charges related to litigation costs.
