Stock Market Today: Tech Shares Rally With Meta and Alphabet Up Big
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Tech stocks are mounting quite the comeback so far in 2023, and shares of Facebook-parent Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft all jumped higher today.
Meta led with a massive day, after earnings beat expectations and the Federal Reserve announced a smaller rate hike Wednesday.
Meta ended Thursday up more than 23% after the company reported surprisingly high revenue numbers and announced a stock buyback. Executives said Meta is finally making progress boosting advertising revenue after a tough year in 2022, when companies cut marketing budgets amid economic uncertainty.
Why it matters
Tech stocks are bouncing back after they performed terribly last year and proved to be particularly sensitive to the Fed's rate hikes. The tech-heavy Nasdaq ended the year down 33% and had an even worse year than the S&P 500, which fell 19% over the course of 2022.
- Investors are becoming more bullish on tech stocks, in part due to expectations that there won’t be more major interest rate hikes this year following the smaller 25 basis point increase the Fed announced Wednesday.
- Amazon and Google-parent Alphabet were up more than 7% at closing on Thursday, Microsoft was up more than 4%, and Apple and Tesla were up more than 3%.
- Overall, the Nasdaq rose more than 3% Thursday and it’s up more than 17% so far this year.
What's next
The tech sector could have another volatile day Friday with Amazon, Alphabet and Apple’s quarterly earnings coming out Thursday afternoon.
[UPDATE: After the market closed on Thursday, shares of Amazon, Alphabet and Apple all dropped, falling in the neighborhood of 3% to 5%.]
Bottom line
Tech stocks outperformed the rest of the market on Thursday and continued their impressive 2023 rally in the face of ongoing challenging macroeconomic conditions that the sector's giants have cited as they've explained recent layoffs.
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