S&P 500, Nasdaq gain as Apple and Amazon soar on earnings

US stocks opened higher on Friday,with S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite posting decent gains as Wall Street cheered strong earnings results from Big Tech giants Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN).

Summary

• S&P 500 gained 0.6% and Nasdaq soared 1.2% as US stocks opened higher on Friday.
• Apple and Amazon stocks jumped 2% and 12% respectively following their earnings reports.
• Wall Street is up after shedding gains on Thursday.

Stocks closed lower on Thursday as risk assets shed gains following this week’s Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s comments. The S&P 500 fell 1% and Nasdaq led the rout with -1.6%.

Dow Jones Industrial Average closed more than 100 points down.

However, with upbeat sentiment around the U.S.-China trade truce and tech giants Apple and Amazon reporting strong earnings, Wall Street flipped positive. The S&P 500 gained 0.6%, while the Nasdaq composite bounced with 1.3%. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lagged with about +50 points in early trading.

Stocks are bidding to gain momentum after muted sessions following the Fed rate cut.

Apple, Amazon lead stocks higher

The gains across the major indexes came as Apple and Amazon stocks soared, 

Amazon shares surged by more than 13% as investors reacted to the e-commerce giant’s earnings report showing the company’s cloud computing division saw a 20% increase in revenue in the third quarter. The earnings results beat analyst estimates.  

Amazon’s AWS revenue jump aligns with increases seen by Google and Microsoft’s cloud units. In their respective quarterly results earlier in the week, Google’s cloud revenue was shown to have jumped 34% while Microsoft’s Azure witnessed a 40% increase.

Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, says confidence in the e-commerce giant is back and predicts a price target of $300 for the company’s stock. The AMZN stock traded at $248.80 and is up 35% the past six months.

Elsewhere, Apple shares tapped about 2% in early gains as the iPhone maker posted strong earnings for the fourth quarter.

Apple also offered an upbeat forecast for the coming quarter to buoy investors.

Nvidia shares also rose, while Meta, which plummeted amid its biggest single-day price drop in three years this week, remained down with -1% as investors continued to jeer the social media behemoth’s spending on AI.