S&P 500 trades near record high on earnings, China trade optimism

MSN ^ | 10/25/2019 | Fred Imbert

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Stocks rose Friday as traders cheered strong quarterly earnings from Intel along with apparent progress on the U.S.-China trade front.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.4% and traded near its record close of 3,025. The broad index also was close to reaching an intraday record set in July.

The Dow traded 155 points higher, while the Nasdaq advanced 0.6%. The indexes hit their highs of the day after the office of the U.S. Trade Representative said China and the U.S. were close to finalizing parts of a phase one trade deal.

Intel shares jumped 7.4% after the chipmaker’s results topped analyst expectations. Intel also issued better-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter.

Those results dampened disappointing numbers from Amazon. The e-commerce giant’s stock dropped 1.8%. Weak guidance for the holiday season period also drove down the stock.

“Margin concerns have shifted from only around the 1-Day push previously, now to AWS, which posted its lowest OM in two years,” Credit Suisse analyst Stephen Ju said in a note. “These moves will no doubt put Amazon in a tremendous competitive position, but we think waiting to later innings to buy the dip makes sense.”

Amazon’s results followed a mixed batch of reports from companies such as Microsoft, Tesla, 3M and Twitter. Microsoft and Tesla rose Thursday on better-than-expected results. However, 3M and Twitter slid on the back of their reports.

Other companies reporting quarterly numbers this week included Visa and Verizon. Visa posted revenue and profit that topped estimates, lifting the stock by 1.5%. Verizon, meanwhile, climbed 0.4%.

More than 38% of S&P 500 companies posted quarter earnings for the third quarter thus far, according to FactSet. Of those companies, 78% have beaten analyst expectations. This week was one of the busiest of the earnings season, with more than 120 companies reporting.

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