Stocks Climb to New Highs Even as Big-Tech Trade Splinters

An Alphabet Inc. earnings flop in the grip of an historically narrow stock rally with echoes of the dot-com bubble. Jerome Powell downplaying hopes of early interest-rate cuts. A fresh regional bank rout.

Yet for the Wall Street drama this week, the bull market powered on thanks to soothing economic data and strong reports from Meta Platforms and Amazon.com. The twist: The easy buy-and-hold trade on the Magnificent Seven is now on shakier ground.

It was an anxious stretch for bulls by any measure. The 13th gain in 14 weeks for the Nasdaq 100 masked wildly divergent reactions in stocks whose soaring valuations are threatening what has long been a monolithic trade in tech heavyweights. Among the five tech giants that announced quarterly results this week, two of them saw their stocks go up post earnings while three were down, breaking the almost lockstep rally that’s been fueled by optimism over artificial intelligence since early 2023.….Read Full Article