Broad day, flat Nasdaq; Netflix -5.8% late; Meta and Tesla tonight

Tuesday was Monday inverted. The Dow rose 1.02% to 52,495.88 and the Russell 2000 1.65% to 2,773.42 while the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.02% to 26,424.82 and the S&P 500 added 0.28% to 7,712.57, per CNBC, and this time the gains were broad: 71 of the 100 stocks and funds we track rose. Healthcare closed at a record, per Reuters, and the AI names were flat to lower. Companies that beat estimates were sold on their guidance, GM down 6.79%, GE Aerospace 3.67%, and Netflix 5.8% after hours. Then the AI trade turned back on overnight: Super Micro guided a quarter’s revenue to $18.5 billion to $19.5 billion against about $15 billion expected and rose about 12% after hours, SpaceX’s revenue rose 161% to $14.6 billion, Korea’s Kospi rose 3.29% with Samsung and SK Hynix up more than 6%, and Nasdaq-100 futures were up 0.75% early Wednesday, per CNBC. Meta, Tesla, IBM, Texas Instruments and Lam Research report after the close today, Thermo Fisher, AT&T, Abbott and Philip Morris before the open.

The rotation: healthcare at a record, small caps and banks up, the AI names sat out

Healthcare led all 11 S&P 500 sectors and closed at a record high, per Reuters via Investing.com, with large drugmakers doing the work. Eli Lilly (LLY) rose 3.49% to $1,283.66 from $1,240.34 and traded as high as $1,311.75, a new 52-week high in the feed and a record by press accounts; it was the S&P 500’s largest point contributor. Merck (MRK) rose 3.25% to $148.30 from $143.63, UnitedHealth (UNH) 3.04% to $419.26 from $406.88 a day before rival Elevance reports, Pfizer (PFE) 2.28% to $30.11 after touching a 52-week high of $30.25, AbbVie (ABBV) 2.26% to $289.08 and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) 2.19% to $259.36. The healthcare fund XLV rose 2.37% to $179.82 and its intraday high of $180.06 is also its 52-week high. Reports attributed the move to rotation out of technology, which had lagged after last week’s selloff, into companies with steadier profits; the S&P 500 value index rose 0.9% while the growth index fell 0.2%, per The Market Breakdown. We found no single healthcare headline behind the move. Thermo Fisher (TMO) rose 1.18% to $687.37 and Abbott (ABT) fell 1.55% to $102.45 after opening at $105.53; both report this morning.

The rate-sensitive groups that fell on Monday rose as the 10-year Treasury yield eased to about 5.12% in late trading, per The Market Breakdown, from 5.15% on Monday. Real estate rose 1.7%, utilities 1.2% and financials 1.0%: Prologis (PLD) rose 2.72% to $127.47, Duke Energy (DUK) 1.73% to $121.33, NextEra (NEE) 0.88% to $78.86 ahead of its report this morning, and the long-dated Treasury fund TLT 0.84% to $80.13. The banks had their first gain after Monday’s loss: the financial fund XLF rose 1.20% to $55.72, Morgan Stanley (MS) 1.08% to $180.40, Goldman Sachs (GS) 1.03% to $884.81, Citigroup (C) 0.67%, JPMorgan (JPM) 0.52% to $335.26, Bank of America (BAC) 0.50% and Wells Fargo (WFC) 0.49%. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) rose 1.43% to $539.82 and its $541.00 high is its 52-week high. Consumer and industrial names rose with the Dow: Disney (DIS) 1.90% to $111.67, Nike (NKE) 1.80%, Home Depot (HD) 1.69% to $315.11, McDonald’s (MCD) 1.59% to $246.52, Honeywell (HON) 1.59%, Starbucks (SBUX) 1.53% and Procter & Gamble (PG) 1.03%, a day before it reports. The Dow fund DIA rose 1.05% to $524.36, the small-cap fund IWM 1.66% to $275.78 and the S&P 500 fund SPY 0.34% to $769.05.

The AI names sat it out. Nvidia (NVDA) fell 0.29% to $216.47 on 79.0 million shares, AMD (AMD) 0.62% to $534.74 after trading as high as $548.11, Micron (MU) 0.98% to $896.07 after touching $918.89, Applied Materials (AMAT) 1.97% to $404.98, Arm (ARM) 3.07% to $221.06 from $228.05, Intel (INTC) 0.37% and Broadcom (AVGO) 0.07%. Apple (AAPL) fell 1.00% to $339.50, Alphabet (GOOGL) 1.13% to $340.28, Meta (META) 1.59% to $694.25 from $705.44 on the day before it reports, Microsoft (MSFT) 0.31% and Amazon (AMZN) was flat, up 0.07% at $262.63 after Monday’s 4.98% gain. The technology fund XLK fell 0.28% to $185.44 and the Nasdaq-100 fund QQQ 0.10% to $717.63. Monday’s software winners split: Palantir (PLTR) fell 0.80%, Cloudflare (NET) 1.98%, Palo Alto Networks (PANW) 1.92% and Datadog (DDOG) 1.51% to $256.43, while MongoDB (MDB) rose 5.02% to $366.18 from $348.69, the largest gain in our 100, Adobe (ADBE) 3.90% to $256.73 from $247.09, ServiceNow (NOW) 2.88% to $149.54, Snowflake (SNOW) 1.35% and IBM (IBM) 2.34% to $241.92 ahead of its report tonight; StockStory cited CNBC reporting that money was rotating out of semiconductors and into high-growth software, and QuiverQuant found no company-specific news for MongoDB. Oil pulled back from a five-month high: Brent settled down 0.69% at $108.79 after touching $111.99, and the expiring November WTI contract fell 1.8% to $101.79, per CNBC and The Market Breakdown. The energy fund XLE still rose 0.25% to $67.97, Chevron (CVX) 0.60% to $225.71 after a 52-week high of $227.28, and Exxon (XOM) fell 0.24% to $177.86 after its own 52-week high of $180.26 in the morning. The gold fund GLD fell 0.54% to $377.65.

Earnings and deals: GM, GE Aerospace, Equifax, 3M, RTX, Braze and Myriad

The pattern of the morning’s reports was beats sold on guidance. General Motors (GM) fell 6.79% to $77.10 on 24.7 million shares, the sixth-largest loss in the movers feed, after adjusted earnings of $3.70 a share on about $50.0 billion of revenue beat estimates by 7 cents and $1.26 billion, because the company narrowed its 2026 adjusted EPS outlook to $12.75 to $13.75 against a $13.41 consensus, kept the adjusted EBIT midpoint at $15 billion in a $14.5 billion to $15.5 billion range, and now expects about $2 billion of commodity inflation including memory chips and logistics; it also announced a $20 billion buyback with no timeframe, per CNBC, Benzinga and BNN Bloomberg. US deliveries fell about 5.5% and market share slipped to 16.1% from 16.8%. Reports called it the stock’s worst day in 15 months.

GE Aerospace (GE) fell 3.67% to $299.87 from $311.28 on 9.2 million shares, the largest loss in our 100, after adjusted earnings of $2.25 a share against a $2.00 consensus and a full-year raise to $8.00 to $8.10 from $7.65 to $7.85. Quarterly free cash flow fell 14% to $2.042 billion, which analysts singled out, and the fourth quarter now needs $2.372 billion to $2.672 billion to reach the new full-year target; management also flagged about $300 million of GE9X program losses as a headwind into 2027, per Benzinga, GuruFocus and 24/7 Wall St. Yesterday’s briefing noted the stock’s pattern of falling after a beat, and it held. RTX (RTX) rose 0.64% to $193.34 after trading as high as $197.00, on adjusted earnings of $1.80 against $1.78 and a record $340 billion backlog, per Investing.com. 3M beat with adjusted earnings of $2.50 a share against an LSEG estimate of $2.38, raised 2026 guidance for the third straight quarter and announced an Amazon data center deal; the stock was up 5.1% at 11:15 a.m. ET, per The Motley Fool, and was among the Dow’s largest gainers, though 3M is not in our feed and we have no verified close. Schwab’s Alexandra Semenova summed up the week so far: “Muted-to-negative stock price reactions to solid earnings results show that the bar is getting higher this reporting cycle for companies to deliver.”

Two moves ran the other way. Equifax (EFX) rose 11.32% to $176.50 on 4.0 million shares, per the movers feed, after adjusted earnings of $2.26 a share against about $2.20 and revenue up 10% to $1.69 billion, even though it lowered the midpoint of its 2026 revenue outlook to $6.66 billion from $6.75 billion on a weaker mortgage market and guided fourth-quarter adjusted EPS to $2.07 to $2.17 against a $2.20 estimate; it raised its margin-expansion target to 100 basis points from 75 and credited AI-driven cost savings, per Seeking Alpha and Investing.com. Braze (BRZE) rose 51.66% to $45.58 on 64.6 million shares, the largest gain in the movers feed, after Salesforce agreed to buy it for $47.50 a share in cash, about $5.66 billion in enterprise value and a 58% premium to Monday’s $30.04 close, with closing expected in Salesforce’s fiscal 2028 subject to Braze shareholder and regulatory approval, per CNBC and the Salesforce release. Salesforce (CRM) itself opened down 2.8% at $235.75 and recovered the whole fall to close at $242.43, down a cent. Myriad Genetics (MYGN) rose 31.52% to $5.55 on 24.0 million shares, per the movers feed, after agreeing to sell its prenatal testing business to Labcorp for $210 million in cash plus inventory, a unit that generated about $160 million of revenue over the past year; intraday reports had the gain near 37%, per Investing.com and StockStory. On the losers side Tower Semiconductor (TSEM) fell 8.27% to $183.78 with no company news, which TradingKey attributed to profit-taking across chips ahead of its November 2 report; DaVita (DVA) fell 6.44%, Mueller Industries (MLI) 6.59% and Genuine Parts (GPC) 5.16%, and we found no confirmed news for those, so they stay as data.

After the close: Netflix fell on guidance, SpaceX and Super Micro revived the AI trade

Netflix (NFLX) fell 1.66% to $68.69 from $69.85 in the regular session on 65.7 million shares, then was quoted at $64.72 after hours, down 5.8% from the $68.69 close, per the extended-hours feed. Third-quarter earnings of $0.87 a share beat the $0.82 consensus and revenue of about $12.87 billion matched it, but fourth-quarter revenue guidance of $13.44 billion fell short of the $13.51 billion consensus, the full-year advertising outlook was cut to about $2.7 billion from $3 billion, and the quarter’s revenue growth was the slowest in three years, per Yahoo Finance, TheWrap and Seeking Alpha. The report came days after the company cut 6% of its workforce. Co-CEO Greg Peters said engagement is healthy and that member responses to this year’s price increases matched prior patterns. Reports put the after-hours drop between 5% and 6%; the 5.8% is the paid feed’s quote against its close.

SpaceX (SPCX), in its first quarter as a public company, reported revenue of $14.6 billion, up 161% from $5.6 billion a year earlier and above the $12.7 billion Bloomberg consensus, and net income of $4.4 billion, or $0.35 a share, against a loss of $1.1 billion a year ago, with growth tied to Starlink and to AI infrastructure and cloud services including the Cursor acquisition, per ABC News and Shacknews. The stock closed down 0.11% at $147.79 in the regular session; after-hours reports ranged from a 2% gain to CNBC’s 8%, so the open is the number to watch. Forbes noted capital expenditure of $48.1 billion over nine months against $13.1 billion of operating cash flow. On the call Elon Musk said the SpaceX and Tesla boards have each formed special committees of independent directors to explore a merger, at shareholders’ request, that he is a conflicted party and not involved, and that assuming a merger is a certainty “would be overstating it”; a deal would need a majority of all Tesla shares, per TechCrunch, NBC News and Axios. Tesla (TSLA) rose 1.54% to $373.71 from $368.06 on 31.7 million shares in the regular session and was quoted at $380.45 after hours, up 1.8%, ahead of its own report tonight.

Super Micro Computer gave preliminary guidance for its fiscal first quarter of $18.5 billion to $19.5 billion of revenue against a prior $14.5 billion to $15.5 billion and analyst expectations of about $15 billion, and a gross margin of 12% to 12.5% against a prior 10.4% to 10.8%, citing AI data center demand; the shares rose about 12% after hours, per Reuters via Yahoo Finance, with one report putting it at 16%. It is not in our feed. Nvidia (NVDA) was quoted at $221.00 after hours against its $216.47 close, up 2.1%, but on only 4,967 shares in the extended-hours feed, so that quote is thin. The news feed also carried a Yahoo Finance report that Nvidia is in talks to financially back Firmus after its stalled IPO, which we have not confirmed elsewhere. Taken together, a Super Micro guide 25% above its prior range and a SpaceX quarter that more than doubled revenue are the first hard AI-spending numbers since last week’s selloff, and the overnight session treated them as an answer to the capital-spending worry that drove it.

Overnight: Korea up 3.29% on the chips, Europe seen higher, UK inflation 3.5%

The Kospi rose 3.29% to 5,735.66, per CNBC and TradingKey, after Tuesday’s 3.73% fall to 5,552.75, a steeper close than the 2.8% drop reported while that session was still open; Samsung Electronics rose 6.2% and SK Hynix 6.5%, per Reuters via Yahoo Finance, and the index triggered a buy-side sidecar when it was up more than 5% intraday, per CNBC. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.85% to 64,621.24 and the Topix 0.86% to 4,043.73, with Kioxia up about 4%, TDK 3.5% and Murata 3.7%; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.92% in its final hour and the Shanghai Composite about 0.4%, per CNBC and Investing.com, so the rebound was a chip rebound rather than a regional one. The MSCI Asia Pacific index rose 1.1%, per Bloomberg.

Europe was seen opening higher: Stoxx 50 futures were up 0.42%, the DAX seen 0.45% higher and FTSE 100 futures up about 0.2%, per CNBC, with Adidas up 3.3% premarket on preliminary third-quarter profit; we have no verified cash open at the time of writing, and ASML was down 2.7% on Tuesday, per Saxo, so the chip rebound still has to cross to Europe. UK consumer prices rose 3.5% in the year to September against 3.4% expected and 3.1% in August, with core inflation 2.8% against 2.7% expected, transport costs up 6.6% and diesel at its highest since July 2022, per the ONS as reported by MoneyWeek and FXStreet; the Bank of England is expected to raise rates a quarter point next month. US futures were up early Wednesday, S&P 500 futures 0.25%, Nasdaq-100 futures 0.75% and Dow futures flat, per CNBC, which had them at 0.47%, nearly 1% and 0.19% late Tuesday evening, so the overnight gain has faded somewhat into the European morning.

On the data, September housing starts fell 5.2% to an annualized 1.221 million against a 1.30 million consensus, with single-family starts down 4.6% to 859,000 and single-family permits down 4.0% to 845,000, their lowest since March 2023, per the Census Bureau via The Market Breakdown, a day after the NAHB builder index fell to 29; the bond market read it as soft, with the 10-year yield easing to about 5.12%. The Fed meets October 27–28 and remains in its blackout period, so there are no official speakers this week. Bitcoin was near $82,856, per CoinGecko via The Market Breakdown.

What to watch today

Before the open: Danaher (DHR), Elevance Health (ELV) and Thermo Fisher (TMO) at 6:00 a.m. ET, Thermo Fisher consensus $6.40 a share on $11.95 billion of revenue; AT&T (T) at 6:30, consensus $0.60 on $31.69 billion, with its call at 8:30; Philip Morris (PM) at 6:55, consensus $2.29 on $11.32 billion; CME Group (CME) and Moody’s (MCO) at 7:00; Abbott (ABT) at 7:30, consensus $1.42 on $12.99 billion; and NextEra (NEE) at 7:30, consensus $1.18 on $8.87 billion, per Newsquawk. Elevance is the first insurer to report since UnitedHealth’s raise, on the day after healthcare’s record.
After the close: Meta (META) at 4:00 p.m. ET, consensus $6.67 a share on $63.31 billion, call at 4:30; Texas Instruments (TXN) at 4:00, consensus $2.42 on $5.92 billion; Lam Research (LRCX) at 4:05, consensus $2.18 on $8.13 billion; IBM (IBM) at 4:10, consensus $2.86 on $16.81 billion; Tesla (TSLA) at 4:10, consensus $0.45 a share, down from $0.50 a year earlier, on $27.94 billion, with its call at 5:30 p.m. ET per the company’s 8-K; also CSX, Kinder Morgan, Las Vegas Sands, Southwest Airlines and United Rentals, per Newsquawk. Meta’s capital spending and Tesla’s merger committee are the two questions the market has already asked.
The opens for Netflix after its $64.72 after-hours quote, GM after its 6.79% fall, SpaceX after its after-hours gain, Super Micro after its 12% after-hours rise, and the chips after Korea’s 3.29% session.
Data: EIA crude inventories at 10:30 a.m. ET, after a draw of 8.56 million barrels last week, with Brent at $108.79; a 20-year Treasury auction at 1:00 p.m. ET, the last one at 5.42%, against a 10-year near 5.12%; MBA mortgage applications at 7:00 a.m. ET after the housing starts miss, per Investing.com. No Fed speakers: the FOMC is in blackout ahead of October 27–28.
The rest of the week: Thursday, Procter & Gamble, Lockheed Martin, Comcast and Blackstone before the open and jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. ET, consensus 200,000; Friday, American Express and SLB before the open, flash PMIs at 9:45 a.m. and Michigan inflation expectations at 10:00 a.m. ET, per Investing.com, and Moody’s review of France’s rating.

Not financial advice. iTrading Buddy summarizes publicly available market data and news; every figure above is sourced from the reporting available before the US open on the date shown. Verify anything you act on.