Stocks rallied Friday to start November off on a high note as big tech earnings excited the broader market despite a weak jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped over 280 points, while the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite added 0.4% and 0.8%, respectively.
Here's how the market settled to close out the week:
S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY): +0.41% or +23.35 points to 5,728.80
Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA): +0.69% or +288.73 points to 42,052.19
Nasdaq Composite Index (NASDAQ: QQQ): +0.80% or +144.77 points to 18,239.92
On the Earnings Front:
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings late Thursday, driven by gains in both its cloud computing and advertising units. For its cloud, Amazon Web Services grew 19% year-over-year to $27.4 billion, a tick below expectations, while its advertising segment matched estimates at $14.3 billion, growing 19% annual to outpace the gains made by the company's core retail business.
For its fourth-quarter, Amazon expects revenue between $181.5 billion and $188.5 billion, representing growth of 7% to 11% annually. CEO Andy Jassy told analysts during Amazon's earnings call that the company also plans to spend about $75 billion on capex in 2024, with the spending "driven by generative AI."
"It is a really unusually large, maybe once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity," Jassy said, adding that shareholders will appreciate that "we're aggressively pursuing it," in the long-term.
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) also delivered fiscal fourth-quarter results that topped Wall Street estimates late Thursday. The company told analysts during its earnings call that it expects "low to mid-single digit" sales growth during its fiscal first-quarter, and implied that services growth will maintain a growth rate similar to the past year at about 13%.
During the quarter, Apple paid a one-time income tax of $10.2 billion to resolve a 2016 case in Ireland.
"We're getting great feedback from customers and developers already and a really early stat, which is only three days worth of data: Users are adopting iOS 18/1 at twice the rate that they adopted 17/1 in the year-ago quarter," CEO Tim Cook told CNBC's Steve Kovach in an interview.
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) reported strong third-quarter earnings and delivered better-than-expected forward guidance late Thursday. Notably, the company recognized $2.8 billion in restructuring charges during the quarter, and $15.9 billion in impairment charges connected to increased depreciation for Intel 7 process node manufacturing assets and impairment for its Mobileye unit.
The semiconductor giant expects fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $0.12 per share on revenue between $13.3 billion and $14.3 billion.
Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings on Friday, as the oil giant posted its highest liquids production level in over four decades at 3.2 million barrels per day. The company said it also returned $9.8 billion to shareholders during the quarter and increased its fourth-quarter dividend to $0.99 per share.
Chevron (NYSE: CVX) also beat expectations for its third-quarter earnings, returning a record amount to its shareholders at $7.7 billion during the quarter, including $4.7 billion in buybacks and $2.9 billion in dividends. The company also benefited from record output in the Permian basin, producing 3.36 million oil-equivalent barrels per day in the third-quarter.
Chevron expects to reduce costs by about $2 billion to $3 billion from 2024 through 2026 as part of efforts to streamline its portfolio.
In Economic News:
Private Payrolls grew at their slowest rate since 2020 in October as national employment was impacted by multiple storms in the Southeast and Boeing's (NYSE: BA) ongoing labor strike. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 12,000 for the month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, well below the 100,000 estimated by Dow Jones. The unemployment rate, however, still remained at 4.1%, matching expectations.
The report noted that 44,000 jobs were subtracted from the manufacturing sector due to the Boeing strike, with the sector declining 46,000 during the month.
"At first glance, October's jobs report paints a picture of growing fragility in the U.S. labor market, but under the surface is a muddy report roiled by climate and labor disruptions," said Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, quoted by CNBC. "While the impacts of these events are real and should not be ignored, they are likely temporary and not a signal of a collapsing job market."