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The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Closed April at Record Highs

What a difference a month makes. 

U.S. stocks, after closing out their worst quarter since 2022 in March, just had their best month since 2020. Investors started April on a high note, celebrating signs of cooling tensions in the Middle East. While the situation in Iran didn't improve much in the following weeks, a reprieve from war headlines allowed Wall Street to turn its attention to artificial intelligence and corporate earnings.

Earnings reports this week affirmed that tech giants are likely to spend upwards of $700 billion on AI-enabling infrastructure this year. The bulk of that spending is earmarked for semiconductors, the designers and makers of which saw their stock prices soar in April. 

Here are some of the highlights from a stellar month for stocks:

• The S&P 500 rose 10.4% in April, its best month since November 2020, when progress on Covid-19 vaccines caused the index to soar 10.75%. The benchmark index closed the month at a record high.
• The Nasdaq Composite surged 15.3%, just shy of the 15.45% gain posted in April 2020 when Covid lockdowns spurred demand for all things digital. The Nasdaq also heads into May at an all-time high.
• The PHLX Semiconductor Index (SOX), rose in 19 of April’s 21 trading sessions, notching an 18-day winning streak from March 31 through April 24. The index rose more than 38% over the course of the month. 
• Alphabet (GOOG), the best-performing stock in the Magnificent Seven in April, added nearly $1.2 trillion in market value during the month. That’s larger than all but seven stocks in the S&P 500 (excluding Alphabet itself.)
• Shares of Intel (INTC) more than doubled in value. Shares rose nearly 25% the day after it reported stronger-than-expected earnings that gave investors confidence the chipmaker is finally finding its place in the AI data center boom. In April, Intel and fellow Dotcom Bubble darling Cisco (CSCO) both closed at record highs for the first time since 2000.
• Memory stocks, already soaring before the month began, kept climbing. Sandisk (SNDK) gained about 75%, bringing its 12-month return to more than 3,300%. Seagate Technology (STX) is up more than 600% in the past year after rising 66% this month. Micron’s (MU) 52% gain in April put it up 570% in the past year. 

Read Investopedia's coverage of today's trading activity here.

• Apple posted fiscal second-quarter earnings that topped analysts' estimates and gave a strong outlook for the current quarter.
• CEO Tim Cook said Apple is seeing "extraordinary demand" for the company's iPhone 17 lineup.

Apple's stock is climbing on a better-than-expected outlook and strong demand for its iPhone 17 lineup.

Shares of Apple (AAPL) were up about 3% in extended trading Thursday, suggesting a rebound to prices near their December highs, after the tech giant gave a revenue forecast that blew past analysts' forecasts. Apple said it now expects year-over-year revenue growth of 14% to 17% in the current quarter, well above the roughly 10% analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha had called for.

The iPhone maker reported fiscal second-quarter earnings per share of $2.01 on revenue that rose 17% year-over-year to $111.2 billion. Both figures came in ahead of analysts' estimates, as Apple's services revenue climbed to another record at $30.98 billion. The report capped a rush of Magnificent 7 results, with Apple the fifth such company to turn in its numbers this week.

Growth in iPhone sales also helped drive Apple's results. Sales of iPhones rose 2% to $56.99 billion in the second quarter, contributing the bulk of Apple's product revenue and landing slightly above the $56.47 billion analysts projected. CEO Tim Cook said in a release that the rise reflected "extraordinary demand" for the company's iPhone 17 lineup.

Apple reported its "best March quarter ever," Cook said, citing "double-digit growth across every geographic segment.”

The strong outlook and results could help boost enthusiasm for Apple's stock, which has had a weak start to the year amid some worries it's lagged peers with its progress in AI after delays in highly anticipated features.

Thursday's report was Apple's first since the iPhone maker announced last week that its head of hardware engineering, John Ternus, will take over the top job from Tim Cook at the start of September.

Many investors hoped Apple's earnings call would shed additional light on what they could expect at Apple's developers conference in June, where it typically teases new products and services, and on the company's succession plan.

Ternus on the call told investors Apple has "an incredible roadmap ahead, and while you're not going to get me to talk about the details of that roadmap, suffice it to say this is the most exciting time in my 25 year career at Apple to be building products and services."

Apple announced a 4% increase to its quarterly dividend to $0.27 per share and said its board approved an additional $100 billion in stock buybacks.

Through Thursday's close, shares of Apple were less than 1% lower for the year and about 5% off their December highs. They've climbed roughly 27% over the past 12 months.

This article has been updated since it was first published to include additional information on Apple's outlook from the earnings call and reflect more recent prices.

• The war in Iran is showing up in all kinds of economic data, from prices to consumer spending habits, according to a slew of information released Thursday by government statistical agencies.
• The surge in gas prices is causing people to save less and divert more of their spending to transportation costs.
• Despite the strain, layoffs remain near all-time lows.

The effects of the conflict in the Middle East have spread beyond gas prices, according to economic data released Thursday, but there was no sign the strain was yet leading to layoffs.

A slew of data Thursday about consumer spending, prices, wages, economic growth, and jobless claims painted a mixed picture of the health of the economy, with the fingerprints of the Iran war all over it.

The most obvious impact of the fighting showed up in the cost of living as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which rose 3.5% over the year in March, up from a 2.8% annual increase in February, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That was the highest since May 2023, and was largely because of the surge in gasoline prices due to the war's disruption of oil supplies from the Middle East. However, even setting aside gas, "core" PCE prices, which exclude the volatile prices for food and energy, rose 3.2% over the year, the most since January 2024.

The war may have influenced consumer spending decisions as well, according to spending and income data. The effects were large enough to be seen in the BEA's report on the Gross Domestic Product for the first quarter, which only included the first month of the conflict. Personal spending rose at an inflation-adjusted annual rate of 1.6% in the quarter, a slowdown from 1.9% in the fourth quarter of last year.

"Declining consumer sentiment and rising inflation expectations likely diminished consumer appetites," Kurt Rankin, senior economist at PNC Bank, wrote in a commentary. "As household budgets face the likelihood of higher energy prices through much of the year ahead, discretionary spending adjustments to the downside are likely to continue in the quarters ahead."

Thursday's data releases show the economy staying afloat but showing a few leaks from the early impact of the Iran war.

The overall GDP grew at an annualized rate of 2%, less than the 2.2% forecasters had expected but reflecting a bounce-back from the fourth quarter of last year, as businesses splurged on AI: equipment spending rose 17% and intellectual property investment rose 13% as companies poured money into data centers and software.

The war left its mark on spending statistics, according to the BEA's data for March. Spending on motor vehicles rose 2.4%, while household equipment jumped 1.5% over the month, possibly because people were trying to get ahead of war-related price increases.

"It appears consumers moved forward some planned purchases to get ahead of any further inflationary spike due to the war," Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist at BMO Capital Markets wrote in a commentary.

Overall, consumer spending rose 0.9% in March, in line with forecaster expectations and reflecting increased spending on gasoline. The personal saving rate fell to 3.6%, its lowest since October 2022, as households sacrificed to pay for those pricier fill-ups.

The high gas prices are not weighing on the economy enough to force companies to lay off workers. In fact, only 189,000 people filed for unemployment last week, the fewest in any week since 1969, the Department of Labor said Thursday.

That doesn't mean the hit isn't coming.

"Past experience also shows it takes a few months for higher energy prices to squeeze employment," Oliver Allen, senior U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics wrote in a commentary. "Accordingly, we still think the unemployment rate will rise this summer."

The round of data showed the economy staying resilient but households starting to show the strain

"The stock market and economy are being held up mainly by the big surge in AI investment," Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a commentary. "Meanwhile, on Main Street, people are hurting from the highest inflation in three years and gas prices back at $4.30. Households are paying about $70 more a month at the pump. Nearly half of the larger tax refunds have already gone to pay for higher gas prices for many families. The only encouraging news is layoffs remain low. But it’s a big warning sign that consumption has slowed to just 1.6% in the first quarter.”

• While silver was 2025's clear winner, gold is leading in performance now. That's not a great sign for precious metals, according to TradeStation's David Russell.
• Record monthly outflows in gold ETFs in March offset strength in bar and coin investment, according to the World Gold Council.

The bear case for gold? Just take a look at silver.

Silver prices gained over 140% in 2025, easily outpacing gold's roughly 65% rise. This year, though, it's lagged the yellow metal: Gold futures are up about 7% so far this year, compared to silver's 5%. The reason? Because, according to David Russell, global head of market strategy at TradeStation, silver is a "high beta" counterpart to gold, meaning it tends to move more dramatically than related assets. And since the Iran war has fired up inflation concerns, weighing on gold, that's been even harder on silver. (Gold recently traded around $4,630 per ounce, while silver was $74.)

"When you're in a bullish market, the high beta asset will typically outperform," Russell said in an interview with Investopedia. "That relationship has reversed since about February. As gold struggled, silver has struggled more."

With crude oil prices remaining aloft, and no sign of a near-term truce with Iran, Federal Reserve officials have been more vocal about their inflation concerns. Analysts have viewed those comments as slightly hawkish, damaging hopes of rate cuts that markets were pricing in last year. Higher rates can make yield-bearing assets like short-term Treasurys look more appealing than precious metals and other assets that don't pay yields. The "lingering optimism from last year is slowly fading," Russell said.

That silver prices are lagging gold's so far this year is one indication that conditions once supportive of precious metals have turned, according to market experts.

That's not to say that the investment case underlying gold—whether it's the debasement trade; the idea that central banks around the world are panning the U.S. dollar for gold, a more neutral safe haven; or something else—is necessarily broken. But silver's relative underperformance and other factors suggest that a precious metals' recovery isn't likely to materialize anytime soon. After last year's blistering run higher, both gold and silver were in positive territory to start the year, but have fallen into the red over the past three months.

That dynamic was evident in the World Gold Council's first-quarter report on gold trends, published on Wednesday, which showed U.S. demand falling to a third of its 10-year quarterly average, driven primarily by a "sharp reversal" in physically backed gold ETF flows—funds like the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) or the iShares Gold Trust (IAU)— in March.

Investments in gold via ETFs over the last decade have, on average, represented about 40% of quarterly net U.S. gold demand. They rose to more than 70% in 2025, the strongest year of inflows seen on record in dollar terms, and the second-highest in tonnage terms, according to the World Gold Council. Then record monthly outflows in March hit, more than offsetting inflows from earlier in the year, and eclipsing demand seen in gold bar and coin investments in the quarter, the firm said.

"U.S. gold demand weakness reflects a cyclical investment pause, not a breakdown in demand," the World Gold Council said.

• Meta stock plummeted on Thursday after the company upped its full-year AI spending forecast but struggled to clarify to investors how it will monetize its investments in frontier models.
• Meta's revenue growth accelerated last quarter to its fastest rate in five years, suggesting AI has improved the performance of its core ad business.

Meta is upping its AI investments. Wall Street's not sure how that will pay off.

Social media giant Meta (META) on Wednesday raised its 2026 capital expenditures forecast to between $125 billion and $145 billion, a $10 billion increase from the forecast given just three months ago. Meta attributed the step-up in spending to “higher component pricing this year and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs to support future year capacity.” It also reported quarterly results that beat the Street's revenue and profit expectations.

But investors blanched—even as they rewarded other big companies for similar moves. Meta stock was down more than 9% in recent trading, putting shares about 8% below where they started the year. Alphabet (GOOG) also upped its AI budget on Wednesday, and its shares jumped more than 7% Thursday. So what gives? 

Meta is an anomaly among tech companies aggressively investing in AI. While Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Oracle are all spending billions on computing capacity they effectively rent out to other companies, Meta is investing in frontier models and data centers for its own use. That difference was at the heart of Wall Street reaction to its latest earnings report.

Unlike fellow hyperscalers like Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft, Meta doesn’t have a booming cloud computing business to showcase the pay-off of its AI investments. Bank of America analysts in a note on Thursday said the returns on Meta’s AI investments “are less clear vs Cloud providers.” Mizuho analysts said Meta’s path to monetizing its frontier AI models “remains unclear.”

How Meta will factor into the roll-out of AI agents was also a question mark weighing on sentiment Thursday. “It remains vague, but we can see [CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s] agentic consumer focused vision start to take shape,” wrote Mizuho analysts. Investors are likely looking for more than a “vague” plan from a company spending more than $100 billion a year on a new, rapidly changing business.

Granted, analysts saw lots to like in Meta’s report—and see AI as part of the reason for that. Revenue grew 33%, its fastest pace since 2021. A 19% increase in ad impressions and 12% increase in price per impression suggest Meta is keeping users on its platforms for longer and serving them more relevant, valuable ads. Mizuho analysts attributed the “eye-popping” increase in user engagement to improvements in its recommendation algorithm, and called Thursday’s sell-off “overdone.” 

“Results reinforce that AI-driven benefits for the core ad business remain intact and should scale with LLM model improvements,” wrote Bank of America analysts. “We believe Meta's AI investments will continue to drive positive returns, justifying its capital allocation,” wrote HSBC analysts on Thursday. 

• Shares of Chipotle rose Thursday as same-restaurant sales came in better than expected in the most-recent quarter.
• But the stock is still down for 2026, with some investors likely waiting to see whether some of the levers that have helped bring customers in will keep on doing so.

Wall Street seems to think Brian Niccol's new company, Starbucks, is "back." It might need more time to come around on the one he left—but there are encouraging signs there, too.

Shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) were up 3% in afternoon trading Thursday, lifted by an 0.5% rise in first-quarter comparable-restaurant sales. While not a huge number, it's an improvement when compared to last year's decrease, and better, according to Visible Alpha data, than Wall Street expected. The stock's move has it pointing back toward a climb off lows that started in late March, though they're still down for the year. Over the past 12 months, they've lost roughly a third of their value.

Should investors be more upbeat about what's coming down the burrito production line? If they're not, it may be because the company sounds cautious, too. Chipotle maintained full-year guidance for comparable-store sales, which it sees coming in flat.

The company, CFO Adam Rymer said on a conference call, is "trending higher" than its forecast. "Guidance reflects a conservative outlook given the dynamic consumer environment," he added.

Chipotle stock was for years a powerful gainer, but the stock has generally fallen since late 2024. The latest quarterly results suggest some reason for optimism if the forces that have improved comparable-restaurant sales keep bringing eaters in.

Chipotle's latest efforts to beef up sales have helped, executives said. Diners are still loading up on protein—at one point, according to the company, customers were putting additional protein in nearly a quarter of all orders—and seem to like a new sauce option. Management thinks many of those who came in for limited-time offers will stick around.

"Our protein limited-time offers typically generate a few hundred basis points of transaction lift over the life of the promotion," Rymer said on the call, a transcript of which was made available by AlphaSense. "The biggest benefit occurs during the first few weeks as we see increased frequency as well as more new guests. Also, we sustain part of this comp lift longer term as many of our new guests continue to dine at Chipotle after the limited-time offer ends." (Sauces can have the same effect, he said.)

Bank of America analysts are banking on the picture improving. They have $50 price target that is more than 50% above yesterday's close and among the higher projections on the Street. "We expect CMG's current outlook could prove conservative," they wrote.

JPMorgan analysts are less optimistic. They clipped their target by a couple of bucks to $38, a more modest premium to recent prices, saying they're "not chasing" the stock.

• Warren Buffett won't headline the audience Q&As at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, leaving them to new CEO Greg Abel.
• Last month in a CNBC interview, Buffett revealed a more hands-on post-retirement role than many expected.
• The new investment Buffett teased in the same interview likely won't surface until Securities and Exchange Commission filings due May 15.

For the first time in six decades, Warren Buffett won't be center stage for Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.A, BRK.B) annual meeting. His recent stock moves could still dominate investor discussions this Saturday.

The 95-year-old stepped down as CEO at the start of this year, handing the role to Greg Abel. But Buffett surprised many last month by revealing in a CNBC interview that he's still steering many of the company's investment decisions.

Buffett also said he's made "one tiny purchase" that he declined to name.

Berkshire is among the largest U.S. companies by market capitalization, and Buffett's moves have long guided investors to the value stocks to be found in the market.

At Saturday's meeting, Buffett will sit on the arena floor with the rest of the board while Abel handles two shareholder Q&A sessions for the first time—one with Ajit Jain, vice chair of insurance operations, and the second with BNSF Railway CEO Katie Farmer and NetJets CEO Adam Johnson.

While Buffett has handed over the microphone, the routine he described in a late-March interview, along with other recent Berkshire moves, suggests the Oracle of Omaha still manages much of Berkshire's portfolio. He told CNBC he goes to the office every day and calls Mark Millard, Berkshire's director of financial assets, each morning before before the market opens, reacting to premarket activity and adjusting limit orders. Millard keeps him updated hourly with a sheet of the day's trades.

Abel sees the trades later and has the final word. "I won't make any that Greg thinks are wrong," Buffett said.

Before stepping down, Buffett ran about 90% of Berkshire's equity portfolio, with Todd Combs and Ted Weschler splitting the rest. Combs left for JPMorgan Chase (JPM) in December. Abel now formally oversees 94% of it, with Weschler handling the other 6%.

Berkshire doesn't say who directed specific trades, but analysts work from a rule of thumb: bigger, value-oriented positions are Buffett's; smaller and tech-leaning ones come from Abel and Weschler.

By that read, the trades widely attributed to Buffett in his final quarter as CEO fit his long-standing taste for durable cash-flow businesses at prices he can defend: 3 million more shares of Chubb (CB), a Chevron (CVX) position raised to 130 million shares, and a $352 million stake in the New York Times Company (NYT). So, too, does the list of businesses Abel said in his annual shareholder letter in February would continue as long-term investments for the company: Apple (AAPL), American Express (AXP), Coca-Cola (KO) and Moody's (MCO).

Berkshire's moves this year also fit with him weighing in on the big calls. In March, National Indemnity, Berkshire's reinsurance subsidiary, took a $1.8 billion stake in Japanese insurer Tokio Marine Holdings (with rights to grow the position to about 10%), deepening Buffett's longstanding exposure to major Japanese firms.

Berkshire has also continued to add to the massive cash pile Buffett built in recent years. The company ended 2025 with more than $373 billion in cash and Treasury bills, and Buffett told CNBC the company bought another $17 billion in T-bills in late March. Some of that record-setting cash pile was used in March for Berkshire's first share buyback in nearly two years—a $226 million repurchase that could signal Buffett sees Berkshire's shares as undervalued.

Saturday will give shareholders more information, as investors get their first sustained look at Abel running a Buffett-style Q&A. More revealing may be Berkshire's first-quarter 13F filing May 15, which could shed light on how much Buffett is guiding the company's trades.

• Shares of Google-parent Alphabet jumped on Thursday after it said surging demand for its AI models and services helped its cloud business grow at its fastest rate in nearly a decade last quarter.
• Meta shares tumbled after it raised its full-year AI spending forecast, despite spending less than expected last quarter and having less to show for its spending to date. 

Big stock moves on Thursday followed big earnings beats out of Silicon Valley on Wednesday.

Google parent Alphabet (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta Platforms (META) all handily beat expectations on the top and bottom lines last quarter. Cloud growth, generally considered a proxy for AI demand, accelerated to its fastest pace in more than three years at Amazon and more than four at Microsoft. Alphabet’s cloud business grew more than 60%, its fastest growth since 2017, when the then-nascent business was about a twentieth of its present size. 

Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are cumulatively worth more than $11.5 trillion, and account for more than 17% of the benchmark S&P 500. Their size gives them a huge amount of influence over the direction of the broader stock market.

Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet all spent less on data centers and other AI-enabling infrastructure last quarter than Wall Street expected. Nonetheless, all three boosted their full-year capital expenditures forecasts, with Microsoft and Meta both citing higher component costs. Booming demand for memory and data storage hardware from AI data centers has caused prices to spike in the past year.

Here’s how Wall Street is treating the results today:

• Alphabet shares were up more than 7% on Thursday, bringing their year-to-date gain to over 18% and making it the best performing stock in the Magnificent Seven so far this year. Alphabet on Wednesday reported record revenue of more than $109 billion, and said its backlog doubled during the quarter to $460 billion. Alphabet raised its full-year capex forecast by $5 billion to a range of $180 billion to $190 billion.
• Microsoft shares were down nearly 5% as disappointing guidance and narrowing profit margins overshadowed its faster-than-expected cloud growth. The company on Wednesday raised its full-year capex outlook to $190 billion. Microsoft shares are down nearly 15% this year, making it the second-worst performing stock in the Magnificent Seven after Tesla (TSLA). 
• Amazon shares ticked down almost 2% after the company’s current-quarter operating income forecast missed analyst estimates despite accelerating cloud growth. Investors were also eyeing the e-commerce giant’s free cash flow, which fell 95% from last year to just $1.2 billion last quarter. Amazon stock, despite slipping Thursday, is up about 14% this year. 
• Meta stock tumbled nearly 10% after the company’s user growth and capital expenditures fell short of estimates. Thursday’s slump plunged Meta stock into the red for the year. Shares have lost nearly 7% of their value in 2026.

As for the rest of the Magnificent 7, Tesla shares rose a bit more than 1%, while Apple (AAPL), which reports its own results after the close, edged higher.

Read Investopedia's full coverage of today's trading here.

• Eli Lilly shares jumped Thursday after the drugmaker posted earnings that topped estimates and hiked its outlook.
• Sales of its weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound have surged, and the company received FDA approval for its first weight-loss pill this month.

Eli Lilly's stock is powering higher on fresh signs of booming demand for its weight-loss drugs. Will it be enough to drive a recovery for the stock?

Shares of Eli Lilly (LLY) were up over 9% in recent trading, after the drugmaker posted earnings that blew past analysts' estimates and hiked its outlook. Eli Lilly reported adjusted per share of $8.55 on $19.8 billion in revenue for the first quarter. Both figures were well above the $6.77 in EPS on revenue of $17.45 billion that analysts called for, as sales of its flagship weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound surged.

Eli Lilly also hiked its outlook, expecting full-year sales of $82 billion to $85 billion, compared to $80 billion to $83 billion previously. The drugmaker said it now sees adjusted EPS of between $35.50 to $37, up from $33.50 to $35.

Thursday's gains could help Eli Lilly's stock recover some of the ground it has lost this year amid concerns of competition in the weight-loss industry after rival Novo Nordisk (NVO) was the first to get a weight-loss pill approved in December.

Executives also said Eli Lilly expects benefit from adding another weight-loss drug to the mix, after the Food and Drug Administration approved its weight-loss pill, Foundayo, at the start of the month. CEO David Ricks said adding an oral weight-loss drug will "meaningfully expand the number of people who can benefit" from the medications.

Analysts said ahead of the report that they see Foundayo eventually becoming the "preferred" weight-loss pill, and said they would be looking for indications of the drug's prescription trends in its first month of availability. Eli Lilly said the drug's U.S. launch is "off to a strong start," with at least 80% of the drug's prescriptions going to patients who are new to weight-loss drugs.

Even with Thursday's gains, Eli Lilly shares are still down about 14% since the start of the year.

News of the day for April 30, 2026

Stock futures are rising as investors digest a barrage of earnings reports from tech giants and other major companies; quarterly results from Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft all came in above Wall Street expectations; Apple is set to release its numbers later today after announcing a CEO succession plan last week; Eli Lilly and Caterpillar headline a busy morning of earnings reports; and investors will be keeping an eye on inflation and economic growth data this morning. Here's what you need to know today.

Stock futures are gaining ground Thursday morning as investors assess last night's slate of Big Tech earnings reports and results from several other noteworthy companies. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.6% recently, those linked to the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq added 0.4% and 0.5%, respectively. The major indexes turned in a mixed performance yesterday but are on track to post huge monthly gains. The Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 enter the day up 14% and 9%, respectively, in April, their biggest one-month gains since 2020.

West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. crude oil benchmark, were down roughly 2% at around $105 per barrel, after rising for most of the past two weeks amid uncertainty about the Iran war. Gold futures were up nearly 2% at $4,645 an ounce, while bitcoin was trading around $76,000, down from yesterday's highs of nearly $78,000. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which affects interest rates on consumer loans, slipped to 4.39% from yesterday's close of 4.42%, its highest level in a month.

Wednesday was one of the biggest earnings days in recent memory, with Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Meta Platforms (META) and Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG) all releasing results after the closing bell. Each of the tech giants beat Wall Street's estimates for revenue and profit, but their stocks have had very different reactions as investors react to details in the reports and comments from executives, with a particular focus on AI-related spending plans. Shares of Google parent Alphabet, which raised its capital expenditures forecast, were up 8% in recent premarket trading and poised to set a record high. Amazon shares were up 4%, also tracking for a new high. Shares of Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, which also lifted its capex outlook, were down 9% ahead of the bell, while Microsoft stock fell 2%.

Apple (AAPL) will wrap up the big week of tech results with its report after the closing bell today. The iPhone maker is expected to report $109.34 billion in revenue along with earnings of $1.94 per share, each rising year-over-year. While the results will be important, investors will also focus on the company's CEO succession plan. Apple announced last week that John Ternus, a longtime hardware executive at the company, will take over the top job from Tim Cook at the start of September. Investors will likely be eager to hear about the transition process and any insights into what Ternus' priorities will be as CEO.

Investors are paying attention to earnings reports from a slew of companies beyond the Magnificent Seven. Shares of heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar (CAT) and pharmaceuticals giant Eli Lilly (LLY) were each up about 6% in premarket trading after strong results. Merck & Co. (MRK) and Cigna (CI) were also gaining ground after their reports, while Mastercard (MA) and ConocoPhillips (COP) lost ground. Hardware firms Sandisk (SNDK) and Western Digital Corp. (WDC) are scheduled to report after the closing bell today amid a hot streak for data storage and memory stocks. Reddit (RDDT), Roblox (RBLX) and EV maker Rivian (RIVN) are also set to report after markets close today.

A key report on inflation and quarterly economic growth data will give investors their latest look at how the Iran war has affected the U.S. economy. The Personal Consumption Expenditures index (PCE) for March and first-quarter gross domestic product data are slated for release at 8:30 a.m. ET. The PCE is expected to show that prices rose 0.7% in March, up from 0.4% in February, and that prices increased 3.5% over 12 months, according to a survey of economists by The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. First-quarter GDP is estimated at 2.2%, up from 0.5% in the fourth quarter.