SPX: S&P 500 Up One Point as Markets Tread Carefully amid Peak Earnings Season

Time for Big Tech to headline the earnings season and show investors how growth is done… right?

• The S&P 500 barely made it in the green paint Wednesday with just a single point in gains as investors were treading extra lightly. The earnings season is about to hit peak performance with two of the biggest and most influential companies on deck to report first-quarter results. Software firm Microsoft MSFT and e-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon AMZN report today after the closing bell.
• The broad-based Wall Street index was buoyed higher largely by the sheer force of a single company. EV maker Tesla TSLA jumped 12% on the day after Elon Musk touted the arrival of a low-cost electric car as early as late this year or at the dawn of 2025. Still, nothing in the report itself was good enough to excite money managers — profits declined 55% and revenue slipped 9%.
• About 180 companies from the S&P 500 present financials this week. The focus, as usual, is on Big Tech. Facebook parent Meta META reported on Wednesday after the bell. And while its figures were good, and growth was there, shares of the social media company nosedived 15% after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg explained why Meta could lose tons of money chasing AI and metaverse success.