STORY: U.S. stocks rallied on Thursday, with the Dow gaining two-tenths of a percent, the S&P 500 adding more than six tenths and the tech-heavy Nasdaq climbing one-and-a-half percent. The Dow and S&P posted their eighth straight session of gains after strong results from megacaps Meta and Microsoft eased concerns about artificial intelligence spending. Microsoft surged about seven-and-a-half percent and closed at its highest level since January, driven by an upbeat quarterly growth forecast for its cloud-computing business Azure.
Nancy Tengler, CEO and chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments, called Microsoft a must-own stock – even at lofty prices – along with two others she said were integral to the development of AI. "Broadcom, the poor man's Nvidia as we call it, and Nvidia, are names that you really do have to own if you believe in this in this trade and this evolving technology. You're getting an opportunity to own Nvidia at a price/earnings-to-growth ratio of well under one times.
That's unheard of for a company generating the kind of growth they expect to generate in coming years. [FLASH] So I think you really need to be in those names for the next three to five years, not for the next three to five weeks." Fellow tech giant Meta Platforms gained more than 4% after posting higher-than-expected revenue on the back of a strong advertising performance.
Meanwhile, shares of Amazon, which closed up 3%, fell by at least that amount in extended trading after the online behemoth reported lower than expected first-quarter cloud revenue growth and forecast operating income below estimates. And Apple, also reporting after the close, narrowly beat Wall Street expectations as consumers stocked up on iPhones ahead of President Trump's tariffs. But shares fell in after-hours trading as investors remained focused on how the company's efforts to work around those tariffs – such as shifting some iPhone production to India – will play out in the coming quarter.
And mobile chip designer Qualcomm plunged nearly 9% after it forecast a hit to revenue from Trump's global trade war.
