A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., July 30, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Stocks rose Thursday following solid earnings reports from tech giants Microsoft and Meta Platforms. Traders also looked ahead to a key trade deadline.
The S&P 500 traded 0.6% higher, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.2%. Both benchmarks hit record highs at the open. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lagged, but was still 0.2% higher, or 78 points.
The S&P 500 has gained more than 3% so far in July, while the Nasdaq Composite is up about 5%. The 30-stock Dow has climbed 1%.
“Magnificent Seven” titans Microsoft and Meta respectively rose 6% and 11.5% on the back of better-than-expected quarterly earnings. Software giant Microsoft said that annual revenue from its cloud computing service Azure exceeded $75 billion. Meta issued an upbeat third-quarter sales outlook, surpassing the Street’s estimates. Microsoft’s strong earnings print propelled the company to a $4 trillion market capitalization.
Fellow Mag-7 names Apple and Amazon are slated to report earnings after the bell Thursday.
Adding to the bullish sentiment, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday said negotiations with China are at a point where both sides ” have the makings of a deal.” Bessent did not give any details on a potential deal, however, nor did he indicate when such an agreement could be made. The U.S. and China have until Aug. 12 before the truce over aggressive tariffs runs out.
His comments come ahead of a key Aug. 1 trade deadline.
Wall Street is coming off a mixed session. The Dow and S&P 500 closed lower Wednesday, while the Nasdaq eked out a small gain, after the Federal Reserve left its benchmark overnight policy rate steady at its July meeting, not all members agreed with the decision.
Ross Mayfield, investment analyst at Baird, said those moves made sense given the market’s currently “stretched” valuations. The S&P 500’s decline marked its second day of losses following a streak of six record closes in a row.
“There’s a lot of good news priced in, so I think little things on the margin can have a bigger impact when you’ve had such a run, like slightly hawkish comments in the FOMC presser,” Mayfield said to CNBC. “Sentiment has shifted back to a pretty bullish tenor, and I think the market needs to consolidate and take a breather, and it’ll grab on to whatever it needs to as an excuse.”
