Microsoft and Meta Platforms lead Wall Street higher

By STAN CHOE Associated Press Business Writer NEW YORK AP Microsoft and Meta Platforms are driving Wall Street higher on Thursday after profits for the Big Tech companies at the start of the year turned out to be even bigger than analysts expected The S P was up and heading for an eighth straight gain which would be its longest winning streak since August The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up points or as of a m Eastern time and the Nasdaq composite was higher Microsoft jumped after the program giant announced strength in its cloud computing and artificial intelligence business drove its overall revenue up from a year earlier Meta the parent company of Facebook and Instagram also topped analysts targets for revenue and profit in the latest quarter It commented artificial intelligence tools helped boost its advertising revenue and its stock climbed CVS Strength and a bevy of other companies also joined the growing stream of better-than-expected profit reports that have been helping to steady Wall Street over the last week The S P is back to within of its record set earlier this year after briefly dropping nearly below the mark Still plenty of uncertainty remains about whether President Donald Trump s arrangement war will force the financial system into a recession Several reports have in recent times shown the U S economic activity is weaker than expected and the latest arrived Thursday showing that more U S workers filed for unemployment benefits last week than economists had forecast It s setting the stage for a more comprehensive description on the job realm arriving Friday And even though companies have been reporting better profits for the first three months of the year than analysts expected multiple CEOs are remaining cautious about the rest of the year General Motors cut its forecast for profit in for example It noted it s assuming it will feel a hit of billion to billion because of tariffs and it expects to offset at least of it GM s stock slipped McDonald s fell after reporting weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected even though its profit was slightly above forecasts An vital underlying measure of performance at its U S restaurants had its worst decline since when COVID shuttered the global business sector McDonald s joined Chipotle and other restaurant chains that have seen customers get more cautious amid all the uncertainty about the commercial sector and inflation that s still higher than multiple people would like Such conditions are raising the threat of a worst-case scenario called stagflation where the commercial sector stagnates yet inflation remains high It s so hated because the Federal Reserve has no good tools to fix both problems at the same time If the Fed were to try to help one difficulty by adjusting interest rates it would likely make the other worse A few encouraging news on inflation arrived Wednesday when a statement noted that the measure of inflation the Fed likes to use slowed in March That s raising expectations among traders that the Fed may resume cutting interest rates later this year in order to prop up the economic activity Those expectations in turn are helping to drive down Treasury yields in the bond realm The yield on the -year Treasury fell to from late Wednesday In stock markets abroad trading was closed in countless countries for May Day or international Labor Day holidays Tokyo s Nikkei rose after the Bank of Japan kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged as multiple investors expected AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed