Wall Street on Thursday opened flat amid Meta and Microsoft strong financial results for the second quarter. In the early hours of trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) opened new tab rose 54,.71 points, or 0.25%, at the open to 44,515.9. The S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab rose 50.4 points, or 0.80%, at the open to 6413.23, while the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), opens new tab rose 273.1 points, or 1.26%, to 21,394.397.
Microsoft and Meta both reported strong earnings for the second quarter of 2025, crossing Wall Street estimates and showing that their big bets on AI are paying off. Microsoft posted revenue of $69.6 billion, up 12% from last year. Its net profit was $24.1 billion, with earnings per share (EPS) at $3.23. The jump was driven by strong demand for cloud services including Azure and other cloud revenue rose 31%. Microsoft’s AI business is growing fast too, now earning over $13 billion a year, up 175% from last year. However, the company warned that future growth may slow a bit.
Meta also had a great quarter, reporting $47.52 billion in revenue (up 22%) and EPS of $7.14, a sharp 38% increase. Most of the money came from ads which is $46.5 billion as more users joined its platforms. Daily active users hit 3.48 billion. Even though Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on virtual reality, is still on losses, the company’s profit margin jumped to 43%. Meta also raised its forecast for the next quarter, pushing its stock price up by over 10%.
Meanwhile, traders await the release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index. According to Dow Jones estimates, headline PCE is expected to have risen 2.5% year-on-year and 0.3% month-on-month. Also on the radar are weekly jobless claims, which will offer fresh signals on the strength of the labor market and potential wage pressures. The data arrives just a day after the Fed held interest rates steady, signaling no immediate plans to cut. Still, markets are pricing in a 50% chance of a rate cut in September.