Google and Tesla couldn’t impress with earnings updates. Both stocks fell after market.

📊 Futures Hit the Snooze Button

  • US stock futures drifted near the flatline early Thursday as Wall Street digested another round of heavyweight earnings. Dow futures slipped 0.1%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures eased 0.1% and 0.2%, respectively. A collective "meh."
  • Wednesday's regular session was equally uninspired. The Dow finished virtually unchanged, the S&P 500 dipped 0.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.6% as investors hesitated to chase tech higher ahead of earnings.
  • Markets are now shifting from "AI hype" to "show me the numbers." Earnings season is entering its busiest stretch, and investors are becoming a lot less forgiving.

🤖 Big Tech Meets Bigger Expectations

  • Alphabet fell about 3% after hours after raising its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to as much as $205 billion.
  • Capex — short for capital expenditures — is money that gets shoved in long-term assets like AI data centers and chips. More spending signals confidence, but it also raises questions about when those investments will actually pay off.
  • Tesla also dropped roughly 3% after reporting 33 cents in adjusted earnings per share, well below expectations. Revenue beat estimates at $28 billion, but investors weren't in the mood to celebrate one strong number while profits disappointed.
  • Together, the reports reinforced a familiar Wall Street lesson: beating expectations isn't enough if investors were not-so-secretly hoping for magic.

🌏 Asia Up, Oil Up Too

  • Asian markets painted a brighter picture overnight. Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 0.6%, the Topix rose 0.3%, and South Korea's Kospi jumped 2.5%, extending its recent rebound.
  • Meanwhile, Brent crude climbed above $95 a barrel, more than $20 above its early-July lows, as disruptions continued across key global shipping routes.
  • Higher oil prices complicate the inflation outlook just as investors thought things were calming down.
  • Thursday keeps the earnings conveyor belt moving with American Airlines, T-Mobile, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern reporting before the open, while Intel headlines after the close.
  • Weekly jobless claims also land today, giving traders another read on the health of the US economy.