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When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Another down day for tech stocks weighed on the broader market Friday, with today's leg lower sparked by reports that a new artificial intelligence model from Chinese startup Moonshot AI bridges the gap with several U.S. models. Poorly received earnings results from streaming giant Netflix (NFLX) weighed on sentiment, too. At the close, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was down 1.4% at 25,520, the broader S&P 500 was off 1.0% at 7,457, and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.8% lower at 52,146. News that Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 is powerful enough to rival models from OpenAI and Anthropic revived competition fears — and rehashed memories from early 2025, when China's DeepSeek sent stocks into a tailspin. It also pressured several AI-related names, including Nvidia (NVDA, -2.2%) and Intel (INTC, -2.0%). A negative reaction to Netflix's second-quarter results also weighed on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq today, with the communication services stock sliding 7.3% — its worst day since April 17. Track all markets on TradingView While the company's earnings of 80 cents per share beat analysts' estimates, its revenue of $12.56 billion fell short and its third-quarter revenue forecast came in slightly below the consensus. In addition, Netflix said it will begin reporting engagement data on an annual basis vs a bi-annual one. "The goal of separating the publication of the report from our earnings results is to keep the focus on our primary financial metrics — revenue and operating profit," the company explained. Looking for more timely stock market news to help gauge the health of your portfolio? Sign up for Closing Bell, our free newsletter that's delivered straight to your inbox at the close of each trading day. Despite the top-line miss and subsequent stock sell-off, Argus Research analyst Joseph Bonner reiterated a Buy rating on Netflix. He also maintained a $120 price target, representing implied upside of 74% to current levels. "While competition is intense amid macroeconomic uncertainty, Netflix remains the 'anchor tenant' for consumers in long-form video streaming," says Bonner. "We see the company's incremental moves into live-event sports programming as particularly directed at enhancing its advertising market as well as subscriber acquisition," adding t...

The 2026 Q2 earnings season is in full swing following the release of the big banks’ results, with many other notable companies on deck in the coming days and weeks. Concerning next week’s docket, several Mag 7 members, Tesla TSLA and Alphabet GOOGL, are scheduled to report. Tesla shares haven’t had a strong showing in 2026 so far, down roughly 15% and underperforming and facing mixed post-earnings reactions. Its results in 2026 have been largely positive from an expectations standpoint, exceeding the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate by double-digit percentages in back-to-back prints. Both EPS and sales expectations have trended higher over recent months, a bullish development as the company gears up to release its results. Earnings are forecasted to climb 22% YoY, whereas revenue is forecasted to see a 12% YoY climb. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Margins have always been a key metric to watch for Tesla, which have largely dictated its price action overall. Its gross margin on a trailing twelve-month basis has recently turned higher after periods of decline, with continued improvement likely to drive significant overall positivity. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research It's also just as critical to rememer that Tesla is entering a massive, heavy-spending cycle, recently raising its 2026 CapEx forecast from $20 billion to over $25 billion. The huge spending levels are primarily aimed at constructing the computational and physical infrastructure needed for its real-world AI initiatives, including data centers to power FSD, the Robotaxi network, and more. Alphabet shares have delivered a return on par with the S&P 500 so far in 2026, up roughly 10% and seeing huge positivity following the latest set of quarterly results. Alphabet has overall continued its stellar earnings track record in 2026, beating both EPS and revenue expectations in each 2026 release so far. Like TSLA, Alphabet has seen bullish EPS and sales revisions for the quarter to be reported over recent months, but the revisions as of late have been more stable than anything. Though there haven’t been upward revisions recently, the stability here is still a positive takeaway. The tech giant is expected to continue its growth trajectory yet again, with earnings and revenue expected to be up 23% and 24%, respectively. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research As has been the case, cloud revenues...

By Lewis Krauskopf NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) - U.S. corporate earnings season gathers steam in the coming week as Alphabet and Intel are set to offer updates that could sway the market-leading AI trade amid high profit expectations and uncertainty over the Iran war. The S&P 500 skidded on Friday to post ‌a weekly decline, dragged down by a steep pullback in high-flying semiconductor shares. Still, the benchmark S&P 500 remained up about 9% in 2026, and stood ‌2% below its early June record high. Increasing expectations for profit strength this year have provided bedrock support for investors' enthusiasm for stocks. Now they are counting on the second-quarter earnings season, just under way, to show the corporate ​profit engine is still humming along, with S&P 500 earnings projected up a whopping 26% in the period, according to LSEG IBES data. "Headlines continue to raise anxiety and leave investors scratching their heads wondering why the market continues to reach new heights," said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Investment Management. "And the reason it does is because the fundamentals have been resilient, and the earnings continue to be outstanding." ALPHABET IN FOCUS FOR AI SPENDING VIEW Alphabet's quarterly report on Wednesday will command Wall Street's attention. The Google parent, the third-largest U.S. company by market value ‌at $4.2 trillion, can jostle indexes as one of the heavyweight "Magnificent Seven" ⁠stocks that have driven U.S. equities higher for much of the bull run that has lasted nearly four years. The company is also an AI "hyperscaler," spending billions of dollars to build out data centers and AI infrastructure. Such AI capital spending has been at the heart of ⁠this year's market rally, driving huge gains for semiconductors and other companies benefiting from the massive outlays. If Alphabet announces "any type of pullbacks with respect to the spending that they're forecasting around AI, you could see ripple effects across the entire AI ecosystem," said Kevin Mahn, president and chief investment officer at Hennion & Walsh Asset Management. Results from semiconductor firms Intel and Texas Instruments take on particular significance due ​to ​the stunning rally this year in chip stocks. The trade faltered in recent weeks, with the Philadelphia ​SE Semiconductor Index ending on Friday down over 20% from its...

Ever since ChatGPT exploded in popularity, investors have worried that artificial intelligence could weaken Google’s most important business. Instead of searching for information and clicking through Google’s advertising-heavy results, consumers can increasingly ask an AI chatbot for a direct answer. For Alphabet, the threat is real as Google Search is its financial engine, generating more than half of the company’s total revenue. But with Alphabet set to report second-quarter earnings next week, new data suggests the feared disruption has not materialized yet. Google’s traffic and search-market share remained stable in June, while its Gemini AI platform continued to gain users, according to a Bank of America note shared with TheStreet. BofA analyst Justin Post used web traffic data from Similarweb, mobile usage estimates from Sensor Tower, and search market share figures from Statcounter for updated information. According to the data, average daily global web visits to Google increased 4% year over year to 2.8 billion in June. More Google: Google just took crown Verizon held for 22 years Google CEO says AI has changed revenue picture completely Google DeepMind prepares for risk of AI agents going rogue That made Google’s web traffic 16 times larger than ChatGPT’s and roughly 90 times larger than Anthropic’s Claude. ChatGPT averaged 179 million daily global web visits, unchanged from both a year earlier and May. In the U.S. alone, Google’s daily web traffic increased 3% year over year to 535 million. While ChatGPT traffic rose 19% to 31 million, it remained only about 6% of Google’s total and declined 1% from May. The results suggest that consumers are adding AI tools to their online routines without abandoning Google Search. Google’s global search engine market share also increased 79 basis points from May and 171 basis points from a year earlier to 91.3%. In the U.S., Google’s share rose 86 basis points from May to 86.7%. BofA said Google’s recent description of an “expansionary moment” for Search could point to higher usage, more commercially valuable queries, and additional opportunities to place ads inside new AI-powered search formats. Given the stable traffic and strong e-commerce activity during the second quarter, the firm sees potential upside to Wall Street’s current Search revenue estimates. BofA maintained its Buy rating and $430 price target on...

Big Tech earnings kick off next week with Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Intel (INTC) set to report results on July 22 and 23, respectively. And investors will have their eyes on AI spending and returns, as well as chip sales. Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta (META), in particular, have been punished for their heavy investments in AI data center capacity, though Google and Amazon (AMZN) have dodged the same fate, as of late. Wall Street will want to hear more about how Microsoft is expanding its Copilot service and AI growth via its Azure platform. Meta watchers will be looking into how the company is using AI to improve ad sales and user engagement. Google and Amazon will need to deliver more of the same to keep Wall Street on their sides, while also ensuring they can keep their spending in check. Keep an eye on the hyperscalers' remaining performance obligations (RPOs), a measure of contracts they've signed but haven't realized revenue from yet, to get a sense of where growth is headed. On the chip side, it'll be all about sales and forward guidance. Nvidia (NVDA), Intel, AMD (AMD), and memory makers will need to show demand is keeping pace or accelerating. But even that might not be enough to satisfy investors who have recently sold the news on results from the likes of Nvidia. Apple's (AAPL) results will be interesting for a handful of reasons. While iPhone sales are always the most important number in the company's earnings, commentary on who is buying and why will be just as noteworthy. Analysts will be watching to see whether customers are buying now to get ahead of potential future price hikes or holding out to get their hands on the company's rumored foldable iPhone, set to launch this fall. Post-earnings discourse will also center around the impact of rising memory and storage costs on Apple's margins and future device pricing. Email Daniel Howley at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @DanielHowley. Click here for the latest technology news that will impact the stock market. Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance

Dow Jones futures: Taiwan Semiconductor and GE Aero fell despite strong earnings as the AI stock sell-off continues.

The social media giant is pouring record sums into an artificial intelligence future, forcing investors to decide if they are buying a proven profit machine or funding an unproven science project. Meta Platforms (META) is a company you know, but it may not be the company you think it is anymore. For years, it was the undisputed king of social media advertising. Today, it’s in the middle of a pivot into one of the most expensive, ambitious artificial intelligence builds the world has ever seen. After gaining 20% over the past month, the stock still trades about 13% below its 52-week high, leaving investors to weigh whether they are buying a dominant business at a reasonable price or funding a very expensive vision with no clear path to profit. When you look at Meta’s valuation, the market seems to be telling two different stories. On one hand, the stock trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.7, roughly in line with the S&P 500’s 24.2. On cash flow, it even looks a bit cheaper, at 13.5 times operating cash flow versus the market’s 15.3. But on the other hand, its price-to-sales ratio of 7.8 is more than double the market average of 3.3. Investors are paying a steep premium for Meta’s phenomenal sales growth, which has averaged 22% annually over the last three years compared to 5.9% for the S&P 500. At the same time, the more modest earnings and cash flow multiples suggest a deep-seated caution about the large spending required to keep that growth engine running. What you get for that price is a business of genuinely rare quality. The core engine, the Family of Apps, including Facebook and Instagram, reaches an estimated 3.56 billion people daily and is a profit powerhouse. In the most recent quarter, revenue grew 33% year over year. The company runs an operating margin of 41%, more than double the S&P 500’s 18.4%, and converts a remarkable 58% of its revenue into operating cash flow. Management’s plan is to funnel this gusher of cash into its next act: building what it calls “personal super intelligence” through its new Meta Super Intelligence Labs. This involves developing its own foundational AI models, to power a new generation of personal and business agents. This vision is backed by a balance sheet built for exactly this kind of large project; with debt at just 5.2% of its market value and $124.0 billion in operating cash flow generated over the last y...

Nearly 700 miles from Silicon Valley, in the arid foothills of Boise, Idaho, you’ll find the headquarters of Micron Technology (MU), a global manufacturer of semiconductor chips and one of the world’s leading technology companies. It's also nearly 2,500 miles from Wall Street. Yet despite its remote location, Micron has become one of the market's biggest AI winners. Shares skyrocketed more than 680% from July 2025 to July 2026 amid explosive demand for the company’s high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are a critical component in AI infrastructure. But unlike other technology giants, such as Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet (GOOG), Micron didn't grow up in Silicon Valley. Instead, the company built one of the semiconductor industry's biggest success stories from an unlikely corner of the American West. Here's a closer look at the chipmaker's Boise HQ. The company's Idaho roots aren't an accident. Micron Technology was founded in 1978 by a team of semiconductor engineers — Ward Parkinson, Dennis Wilson, and Doug Pitman — who found themselves without jobs when their contract with Mostek Corp. was unexpectedly canceled. So they teamed up with Ward’s brother, Joe Parkinson, a corporate lawyer, to build their own semiconductor firm from scratch. They started out designing Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips for other companies. In 1980, they were introduced to Boise billionaire JR Simplot, who had made a fortune selling frozen French fries to McDonald's. Simplot was impressed by the team’s dedication to producing faster DRAM chips than anyone else. He was even more bowled over by computer technology. Simplot believed the computer industry was on the cusp of a revolution, and one day, while driving his Lincoln from his potato fields to the clean rooms at Micron, he prophesied that PCs were going to be "bigger than the goddamned wheel." Related: Micron Technology’s stock buybacks explained Simplot invested $1 million in the fledgling company, which gave Micron the capital it needed to move beyond consulting and begin manufacturing its own memory chips at scale. Just six years later, in 1984, the company went public at $13 per share. What began as a startup eventually became one of the world's most valuable semiconductor companies, surpassing a $1 trillion market capitalization on May 26, 2026. Unlike the headquarters of Meta Platforms (META), which has Frank Geh...

Booking Holdings, Alphabet, and six other companies have underperformed their sectors despite improving earnings expectations, setting up potential upside during second-quarter earnings season.

Goldman Sachs, investment banker to SpaceX and Alphabet, rode the AI investment boom to a huge Q2 earnings beat. The Stock Of The Day soared.

Google is reportedly expanding sales of its custom TPUs to independent cloud providers, moving beyond exclusive use within Google Cloud. According to The Information, Google is pitching TPUs as offering more stable performance and simpler networking than competing GPU-based systems. The reported expansion comes while Wall Street reassesses AI spending, with UBS lowering price targets on Alphabet and Meta ahead of earnings. Alphabet-led (GOOG, GOOGL) Google is reportedly expanding efforts to sell its custom AI chips to independent cloud providers as a direct challenge to Nvidia's (NVDA) dominance in AI hardware. The report from The Information comes as Wall Street has trimmed price targets on Alphabet, Meta Platforms (META) and Amazon (AMZN), even as other analysts raise long-term AI capex forecasts across the sector. See what 10M+ investors are talking about. Get the Stocktwits Daily Rip for what retail is watching right now, free to your inbox GOOG stock edged 0.5% lower in midday trade on Monday amid a broader market sell-off following rising oil prices after tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated over the weekend. The tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 took the biggest hit compared to the S&P 500 and Dow Jones. The Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 (QQQ), which tracks the tech index, fell as much as 1.8% in midday trade. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around Alphabet’s shares trended in ‘bearish’ territory over the past day. Meanwhile, NVDA’s stock fell nearly 3% in midday trade, with retail sentiment trending in ‘extremely bullish’ territory over the past day. According to The Information, Google's tensor processing units (TPUs) have so far been housed almost entirely in Google's own facilities and rented out only through Google Cloud. Now the company is trying to sell its custom AI chips directly to "neoclouds," young companies built around renting out Nvidia GPUs. It said that one of Google’s targets was Nscale, a two-year-old neocloud in which Nvidia is a major investor and preferred shareholder. The report added that Google’s pitch centers around offering more stable performance and simpler server networking than with GPUs, particularly as Nvidia's newer Grace Blackwell and upcoming Vera Rubin systems have caused deployment headaches for buyers. However, Nvidia reportedly caught wind of the Google talks and discussed financial incentives with Nscale that one sour...

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. HSBC identified 10 Buy-rated stocks it believes are well positioned ahead of the second-quarter earnings season, citing favorable trends across technology, financial, consumer and industrial sectors. HSBC named Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), Alphabet (GOOGL), AbbVie (ABBV), Caterpillar (CAT), Marriott International (MAR), Vertiv (VRT), NextPower (NXT) and Wells Fargo (WFC) as its preferred earnings-season ideas. The firm said the selections reflect company-specific growth drivers rather than a single sector theme. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 5 Warning Sign with AMZN. Is AMZN fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. HSBC expects Amazon to benefit from continued cloud computing demand and AI infrastructure investments, while Microsoft could see further momentum from Azure AI services. The brokerage also pointed to Meta's AI-powered advertising tools, Alphabet's cloud and search businesses, and Vertiv's exposure to expanding data center spending. Outside technology, HSBC said AbbVie's immunology portfolio, Caterpillar's exposure to AI-related power demand, Marriott's asset-light business model and Wells Fargo's improving earnings outlook could support results. The brokerage also highlighted NextPower's project backlog and expansion efforts as potential growth catalysts heading into the reporting season.