Stock Market Live July 24: Tech Earnings May Keep S&P 500 (VOO) Above Water on Thursday
Key Points
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The S&P 500 enters Thursday trading right where it left off Wednesday night — neither up nor down.
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Multiple big tech companies reporting earnings last night may overshadow new earnings reports coming out this morning.
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Thursday Wrap-up
The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF closed at 583.20 Thursday, up less than 0.1%.
Tractor Supply Revs -- Gently
In continued earnings news, suburban farmer favorite Tractor Supply (Nasdaq: TSCO) reported Q2 earnings of $0.81 this morning, $0.01 better than expected. Revenue for the quarter likewise edged out expectations, coming in at $4.44 billion.
Tractor Supply stock, however, is down 2% today. The Voo is still up 0.2%.
Union Pacific Keeps Chugging Along
Returning to earnings news that is not about Tesla, railroad Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) reports it earned $3.03 in Q2, $0.13 better than analyst forecasts. Revenue for the quarter edged out expectations at $6.2 billion. Management also reaffirmed its full-year guidance and said it’s still likely to hit grow earnings in the high-single to low-double digits over the next three years.
The stock is down 3%, however. Buoyed by tech giant earnings, the Voo is up 0.2%.
Tesla Tumbles
Tesla arguably beat expectations in last night’s earnings report — but try telling that to investors. Shares of the electric cars leader are tumbling more than 8% in morning trading. CEO Elon Musk is warning investors the company could be looking at a few “rough” quarters ahead, “you know, Q4, Q1, maybe Q2” of 2026.
And when might things improve? “Once you get to autonomy at scale in the second half of next year, certainly by the end of next year, I think I’d be surprised if Tesla’s economics are not very compelling,” said Musk in a Wall Street Journal interview.
So… in other words things could remain rough for nearly the next 18 months. No wonder the stock is down today.
This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates.
The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) hit a new all-time high last night, buoyed by investors happy to hear that President Trump has won trade concessions from Japan, and hoping a similar deal with the European Union might soon appear. No such luck so far this morning, and the Voo is looking pretty flat in pre-market trading… but the day is still young.
In the absence of big, world-shaking geopolitical tariffs news, investor eyes are drawn instead to earnings season, and in particular, a series of tech giants and S&P 500 components that reported their Q2 numbers last night.
Let’s dive in.
Last Night’s Earnings
Beginning with the obvious, tech behemoth Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG) reported $2.31 per share in profit last night on $96.4 billion in sales, beating on top and bottom lines. All-important cloud computing revenue (a proxy for the company’s AI business) was $13.6 billion, up 32% year over year.
Meanwhile, Alphabet announced it will spend $85 billion this year on capital spending, largely aimed at keeping that AI business growing.
Fellow tech giant IBM (NYSE: IBM), which would really like to be an AI company itself, also reported top- and bottom-line earnings beats. Q2 profits were $2.80 per share and IBM did $17 billion in sales in Q2 — then raised its guidance for full-year free cash flow to $13.5 billion.
Rounding up the evening’s Big 3, Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) reported $0.40 per share in profit, right in line with expectations, and revenue of $22.5 billion — down 16% year over year, but still a bit ahead of expectations. Gross profit margins moved 250 basis points higher, sequentially, to 15%.
In cryptic commentary, Tesla alluded to “initial production of a more affordable model [electric car] in 1H25 — which has just ended. This would appear to the long-awaited Model 2 economy car, but Tesla wasn’t more specific.
Today’s Earnings
Then, this morning we got earnings news from a few more S&P components.
Test results giant Labcorp (NYSE: LH) says it earned $4.35 per share in Q2 on sales of $3.53 billion, about $50 million more than expected. Management also raised earnings guidance to as high as $16.50 for the year, well ahead of Wall Street forecasts.
American Airlines (Nasdaq: AAL) reports $0.95 per share in profit on sales of $14.4 billion. Again, both numbers topped expectations, albeit the forecast for the rest of this year looks iffier. American Airlines says it might earn as much as $0.80 this year — or it could lose as much as $0.20.
It all really depends on how the economy shakes out.
© Man in pool having fun on summer holidays. Young man swimming and lurking on vacation. Half head above water stalking. (Shutterstock.com) by Dirima
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