Amazon's Earnings Beat Sends Stock Up 15%, Dow Notches Fourth Straight Winning Month

Amazon reported its biggest quarterly revenue growth in more than four years on Friday, July 31, and Wall Street rewarded it hard. Shares surged as much as 15% during the session, according to CNBC, closing out a week of wild swings for the broader market.

The S&P 500 closed at 7,489.72, up 0.7% on the day, according to CNBC. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1% to 25,373.85. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 276.97 points, or 0.53%, to close at 52,485.03. The Dow finished July with its fourth straight positive month.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy gets the credit here. Jake Dollarhide, chief executive of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, told the Post and Courier that Jassy "just put those fears to bed" regarding worries Amazon's AI infrastructure spending was reckless. The company's cloud-computing business drove the beat.

Microsoft set the table Thursday, jumping 16% after posting stronger-than-expected Azure cloud growth, its biggest one-day percentage gain since 2008, according to the Post and Courier. Together, Amazon and Microsoft's results calmed a market that had spent the month nervous about whether hundreds of billions in AI data center spending would ever pay off.

Apple didn't get the same treatment. Shares fell more than 7%, and Livemint put the drop even higher at 9.1%, despite Apple's fiscal third-quarter revenue beating expectations on a 22% jump in iPhone sales. The problem was services revenue, which came in short and spooked investors regardless of the strong iPhone numbers. Apple also warned that supply constraints would hurt growth, according to the Post and Courier, adding to concerns that recent iPhone price hikes could weaken demand.

Chip stocks joined the rally. Micron Technology climbed 5.9% and AMD rose 6%, according to Livemint. Monolithic Power Systems surged after forecasting third-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates. The broader PHLX semiconductor index gained on the day but remains down more than 20% from its June 22 record close, the Post and Courier reported, a reminder that this month's chip stock beating hasn't fully healed.

GoDaddy had the worst day of the bunch. Livemint reported shares tumbled 24.4% after the company lowered its full-year revenue guidance.

The bond market is the story nobody's cheering about

The 30-year Treasury yield spiked to its highest level since 2007, hitting roughly 5.25%, according to CNBC. The 10-year topped 4.7%, a level not seen since January 2025.

Investors have lost confidence in Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh's commitment to fighting inflation after Warsh himself admitted this week, "We've got no magic wand." That's not a reassuring thing for a Fed chair to say when yields are already running hot, according to CNBC.

Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at US Bancorp Asset Management, told CNBC that a 10-year yield approaching 5% "is perhaps a level that will cause angst for sentiment and pressure valuations." He called it "a roller coaster market filled with angst and opportunity," pointing to Middle East conflict pushing oil prices higher as an added inflationary pressure.

That conflict is real and it's not abstract for prices at the pump or in the stock market. West Texas Intermediate crude settled up 1.3% at $84.67 a barrel Friday, while Brent climbed to $90.12, according to CNBC. Livemint's earlier intraday numbers had Brent lower, at $88.68, up 2.1%, tied directly to uncertainty over Middle East crude exports amid the Iran conflict.

Three Federal Reserve officials who dissented at this week's policy meeting are pushing for an immediate rate hike to bring inflation back to the Fed's 2% target, the Post and Courier