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The giant-name parade kept marching
Wednesday’s earnings round was basically a flex contest, and the four horsemen of the S&P 500 growth apocalypse — Amazon, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft — all showed up with numbers that made the bears look a little silly.
Amazon and Alphabet got the loudest cheers thanks to especially sharp EPS surprises. The theme running through the reports wasn’t magic, just good old-fashioned operating leverage and some shifting capital spending choices — the kind of stuff that says, “Hey, we can grow without burning cash like a bonfire.”
Why investors care
When the biggest companies in the market beat expectations, it does more than goose a few stock charts:
- It reinforces that mega-cap earnings still have the power to drag indexes around like a pickup truck towing a canoe.
- It keeps the AI, cloud, and digital ads narratives intact, which matters if you’ve been wondering whether the hype has legs.
- It also reminds you that your “diversified” S&P 500 exposure can still be weirdly dependent on a handful of giant names doing giant-name things.
The not-so-secret subplot
The CAPEX angle is the sneaky interesting part. If these companies are getting smarter about where they spend while still posting strong profits, that’s usually a good sign for margins. Translation: they may not be slowing down — they’re just becoming choosier adults about the tab.
Big picture: this was a strong night for the market’s biggest engines, and when the engines are humming, the whole car tends to feel faster.