A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Tom Westbrook
Meta paid a dividend and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN)'s $170 billion in quarterly sales beat expectations. Cue cheering that added a combined $280 billion in market value to the two companies' shares.
Nasdaq 100 futures were up 1% in Asia to provide a positive end to a rough week.
The numbers are worth walking through. Profit at Facebook (NASDAQ:META) parent Meta tripled from a year earlier, with revenue up one-quarter to top $40 billion.
Amazon, meanwhile, swung back to a full-year profit of more than $30 billion with handy contributions from advertising sales and its high-margin servers business.
Sam Rines at research firm CORBU in Texas says the duo are beneficiaries of corporate spending across the U.S. to boost product volume.
"Some will find volume, many will not," he said in a note. "The advertisers will find revenues."
The solid reports had the two companies outshining the other "Magnificent Seven" stocks: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), which were punished by investors following their earnings announcements, and Nvidia, which reports later in February.
The Seven account for nearly 29% of the S&P 500 and their outperformance - collectively they were responsible for 62% of the index's total return last year - is starting to generate some discomfort.
Amazon and Nvidia are particularly expensive, with price-to-earnings ratios in the eighties, as investors seem willing to bet that profit growth will eventually justify the valuations.
At an outlook briefing in Singapore this week, VP Bank's group chief investment officer Felix Brill pointed out, only half joking, that just three of the Magnificent Seven gunslingers survived in the John Sturges western.
Beyond the tech earnings, the market mood is jittery. Shares in Japan's Aozora Bank tumbled for a second session after a surprise loss provision against U.S. office loans. That follows heavy selling of U.S. regional banks after a similar warning by New York Community Bancorp.
Bank earnings - Caixabank, Deutsche, Danske and UniCredit - headline the European day ahead of U.S. labour data.
Traders have been pushing back bets on the beginning of U.S. rate cuts this year, but will soon need to see signs of softness in the labour market to justify their current pricing of more than 140 basis points of cuts by year's end.
Key developments that could influence markets on Friday:
Economics: French industrial production, U.S. payrolls
Earnings: Caixabank, Deutsche Bank (ETR:DBKGn), Danske Bank, UniCredit, Chevron (NYSE:CVX), ExxonMobil
(By Tom Westbrook; Editing by Edmund Klamann)