SPX: S&P 500 Futures Soar 1% After Meta, Microsoft Post Blowout Quarterly Earnings

Big beats, bigger forecasts — and Wall Street is loving the AI spending surge.

🚀 Futures Surge

• S&P 500 futures jumped 1% early Thursday and Nasdaq Composite futures surged 1.3% after Meta META and Microsoft MSFT crushed earnings estimates and raised outlooks, thanks largely to — what else? — artificial intelligence.
• Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose a more modest 0.3%, or 130 points, as the Magnificent Seven juggernauts once again stole the spotlight.
• Wednesday was a good day to be in tech stocks as both these titans are surging to record highs in pre-market trading Thursday.

🤖 Meta & Microsoft Blast Off

• Meta shares popped 11% in after-hours trading as the social media powerhouse delivered $7.14 EPS vs $5.88 expected. Revenue hit $47.5 billion, smashing the $44.8 billion consensus and up 22% year over year.
• Microsoft rose 8%, reporting $3.65 EPS on $76.4 billion in revenue, both well ahead of Wall Street forecasts. That’s up from estimates of $3.37 EPS and $73.9 billion in sales.
• Azure, Microsoft’s cloud arm, was the standout — topping $75 billion in annual revenue as enterprise demand for AI compute power keeps growing.

💸 Spend, Spend, Spend

• Meta even raised the lower end of its capital expenditure guidance from $64 billion to $66 billion, citing booming demand for AI infrastructure and services. And… who’s going to say it… poaching 👏 AI 👏 researchers 👏 from 👏 OpenAI 👏 and 👏 Apple AAPL.
• Zuck said he expects higher third-quarter sales and sustained ad revenue growth, bolstered by its AI recommendation engine across Instagram and Facebook.
• Microsoft’s Satya Nadella said enterprise adoption of AI is driving a new cycle of productivity tools, including Copilot and AI-integrated Azure services.

💪 Powell's Hawkish Hold

• The market rally came just hours after a choppy Wednesday, when Fed Chair Jerome Powell held rates steady but warned a rate cut isn’t imminent — spooking some risk-sensitive investors.
• The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% on the day and the Dow lost 171 points, while the Nasdaq eked out a 0.15% gain, setting the stage for tech-led futures to shine Thursday.
• With more Magnificent Seven earnings ahead — including Apple and Amazon tonight — the market is preparing for another potential leg higher, fueled by megacap momentum.