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The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq fell on Monday as a deepening conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas roiled global markets and pushed investors toward safe-haven assets, while crude prices jumped over 3%.

Broadly speaking, large- and mega-cap tech stocks are far from bear market territory. But the Nasdaq-100 Index (NDX) closed 6% below its 52-week high last Friday. These days, that could qualify as a pullback among stalwart growth stocks. It could also signal a buying opportunity with ETFs such as the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) and [...] Read more at ETFTrends.com.

EU antitrust regulators are asking Microsoft's users and rivals whether Bing should comply with new tough tech rules and also whether that should be the case for Apple's iMessage, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

Wall Street's main indexes were set for a lower open on Monday as a deepening conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas roiled global markets and pushed investors toward safe-haven assets, while crude prices jumped around 4%.

Wall Street is highly bullish on Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) stock right now. Heading into the company's huge Prime Day promotion, shares are up 50% in 2023, compared to just a 10% increase in the S&P 500.

On Oct 6, the Department of Labor reported strong nonfarm payroll data for September, which eliminates the fear of a large section of market participants that the U.S. economy may succumb to a recession in the near future.

U.S. stock index futures fell on Monday as a deepening conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas roiled global markets and pushed investors toward safe-haven assets, while crude prices jumped close to 4%.

Amazon UK will spend 170 million pounds ($207 million) on two pay rises for its frontline operations staff over the next six months in a move which could catch the attention of the Bank of England which is keeping a close eye on inflation pressures.

For Immediate ReleaseChicago, IL – October 9, 2023 – Zacks Market Edge is a podcast hosted weekly by Zacks Stock Strategist Tracey Ryniec. Every week, Tracey will be joined by guests to discuss the hottest investing topics in stoc

How does Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) compare against the other four stocks that trade on U.S. exchanges with market caps of more than $1 trillion? It depends on which measurement you use.

U.S. stock index futures slipped on Monday as a growing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas roiled global markets and pushed investors toward safe-haven assets, while crude prices jumped close to 3%.

Warren Buffett has proved long-term investing works. He's stayed with companies he believes in during market ups and downs, and as a result, as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, he's delivered a compounded annual gain of more than 19% over the past 57 years. That's compared to a 9.

Short-term unpredictability is one of the few guarantees Wall Street brings to the table. Since this decade began, the three major stock indexes have ping-ponged between bear and bull markets.

Most of 2023 has been defined by the big tech stocks driving bullish sentiment and overcoming 2022’s bear market. That said, since about halfway through the summer, the bull market has been on pause with the prospect of interest rates remaining high for longer than expected, among other macro factors, putting a dampener on proceedings. Still, going by the past week’s performance, there are signs the bulls’ charge is about to resume in earnest. In fact, with Q3 earnings season about to commence, Goldman Sachs’ portfolio strategist Cormac Conners points out that going by past events, the coming period might be a bountiful one, especially for the tech leaders. “History suggests that the upcoming 3Q results may catalyze a momentum reversal in the largest tech stocks,” Conners recently wrote. “Since 4Q16, the mega caps in aggregate have beaten consensus sales growth expectations 81% of the time and have outperformed in two-thirds of earnings seasons, typically by 3pp.” With this in mind, we decided to get the lowdown on two mega-cap tech names the Goldman analysts believe are primed to use the coming earnings season as a catalyst for further gains. Moreover, according to the TipRanks database, both are currently rated as Strong Buys by the analyst consensus. Here are the details. Nvidia Corporation ( NVDA ) We’ll start with Nvidia, a major player in the semiconductor chip industry. The company has found a solid base of support in strong customer demand for its high-end GPU chips, which have become essential to the rapid growth of AI technology. The explosive growth of AI since the end of last year has clearly been good for Nvidia. Since 2020, the company has been an important supplier of GPU chips for OpenAI, whose ChatGPT sparked off the current AI revolution. OpenAI has already indicated that it will need some 10,000 chips heading into next year, just to maintain ChatGPT’s performance capabilities. Nvidia’s exposure to this, and to other facets of AI, has fueled a surge in its top and bottom lines over the past several quarters, and Nvidia has become one of just 5 publicly traded companies valued at more than $1 trillion. A quick look back at Nvidia’s last earnings report will show the magnitude of the company’s recent growth. Nvidia reported a company record of $13.5 billion in quarterly revenue for fiscal 2Q24, its last release. This was up 101% year-over-year, and beat the forecast by over $2.4 billion. The bottom line of $2.70 per adj. share, was 61 cents per share ahead of the estimates – and was up a whopping 429% compared to the prior year quarter. Looking ahead, the Street expects further gains when Nvidia reports its fiscal Q3 results next month. The outlook for revenue is $15.87 billion, and for non-GAAP EPS is $3.35. For Goldman’s Toshiya Hari, the near- to mid-term looks good for the company. Nvidia should benefit, in his view, from continued strong customer demand, fueled by data center and AI applications. The 5-star analyst writes, “Looking ahead, we see the combination of a strong/broadening demand profile in Data Center and an improving supply backdrop supporting sustained revenue growth through CY2024. Importantly, although we recognize emerging competition from the large cloud service providers (i.e. captive/internal solutions) as well as other merchant semiconductor suppliers, we expect Nvidia to maintain its status as the accelerated computing industry standard for the foreseeable future given its competitive moat and the urgency with which customers are developing/deploying increasingly complex AI models.” This stock is off the peak value it hit at the end of August, but it is still up by 219% year-to-date and Hari thinks there are still solid gains ahead to look forward to. He gives NVDA shares a Buy rating, with a $605 price target to imply 32% upside potential for the next 12 months. (To watch Hari’s track record, click here) The tech giants never lack for Wall Street attention, and Nvidia has 39 recent analyst reviews on record – with a lopsided 38 to 1 breakdown favoring Buys over Holds, for a Strong Buy consensus rating. The shares have a trading price of $457.62, and their $647.04 average price target is more bullish than Hari’s, suggesting a 41% gain for the year ahead. (See NVDA stock forecast ) Amazon ( AMZN ) Next up is Amazon, one of the world’s instantly recognizable brand names. Amazon boasts a proven record as a ‘tech survivor,’ having gotten its start in the late ‘90s – and then surviving the dot.com bubble that winnowed the early field of tech companies. Today, Amazon leads the global e-commerce market, and with its $1.3 trillion market cap is another of the 5 largest firms in the public stock markets. This impressive edifice stands on the company’s online retail operations, which last year moved approximately $690 billion in gross merchandise volume. While online retail gets the headlines, Amazon has its hands in multiple pots. The company is constantly developing new products to take advantage of newly opened niches – look at the way Amazon Web Services quickly became a major player in cloud computing. Amazon also has multiple AI-based products under development, with prominent projects including a chatbot, an image building platform, and a software code development tool. The company is also integrating AI into the existing AWS, which in the last reported quarter, 2Q23, generated over $22 billion in revenue. Amazon shares have retreated some ~12% from their September peak although the stock is still up 49% for the year-to-date, an overall gain based on solid performance. We saw those performance metrics in the company’s 2Q23 results. Amazon’s top line came to $134.4 billion, beating the forecast by $3 billion and growing 11% y/y. We’ve already noted the y/y growth in AWS, which helped to power the overall revenue total; the company’s North American retail was also up year-over-year, by 11%, to reach $82.5 billion. Amazon’s Q2 EPS figure of 65 cents was 31 cents better than expected – but that figure benefited from a $200 million gain due to non-operating expenses from the company’s equity holdings in Rivian Automotive, where the comparable figure in the previous year quarter was a $3.9 billion loss. When we look towards Amazon’s upcoming Q3 results, we see that Wall Street is expecting an EPS of 58 cents, supported by revenues of $141.5 billion. 5-star analyst Eric Sheridan covers this stock for Goldman, and in his view, the company’s strong AWS performance will remain in the driver’s seat, while Amazon as a whole does well on the long term: “We remain convinced that AWS remains on track to return to a more normalized growth/margin structure in 2024 and that the segment is well positioned (contrary to current investor perception) against the rising computing shifts towards AI. Looking over a multi-year timeframe, we reiterate our view that Amazon will compound a mix of solid revenue trajectory with expanding margins as they deliver yield/returns on multiple year investment cycles.” Sheridan’s stance supports his Buy rating, and his $180 price target implies a strong 41% upside potential on the one-year horizon. (To watch Sheridan’s track record, click here) Overall, Amazon has picked up 41 recent analyst reviews, and these include 40 Buys against a single Hold to give the stock a Strong Buy consensus rating. AMZN boasts an average price target of $176.02, suggesting an increase of 37.5% from the current $127.96 share price. (See Amazon stock forecast ) To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’   Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

Prior to its third-quarter earnings report, electric vehicle (EV) company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) released vehicle production metrics. Tesla produced significantly fewer vehicles compared to the second quarter, and it also missed Wall Street estimates by a wide margin. Nonetheless,

Growth investors often lament that if they had just put $10,000 in one of the more successful tech giants, they would be millionaires today. Knowing that, they will often buy what they think are stocks that will soar in the future in the hope of earning such a return years later.

Last week, renowned hedge fund manager Bill Ackman spoke at length about a new position in his portfolio. As it turns out, Silicon Valley investors are not the only ones looking to capitalize on the rising popularity of artificial intelligence (AI).

Most of us probably like the idea of getting something for free. And most of us like the idea of having money, too. Therefore, the prospect of receiving free money should be especially enticing.

Are you eager to retire with a growing stream of income from the dividend stocks in your portfolio? Now is a great time to go shopping.

Social media company Meta Platform's ( NASDAQ:META ) efforts to strengthen its position in the AI (artificial intelligence) race have gained significant traction in recent months. The stock has risen by 162% year-to-date, outperforming the S&P 500's ( SPX ) 12% gain, and analysts see more upside ahead. Meta's attempt to strengthen and monetize its already popular social media platforms by adopting generative AI could boost its revenue and earnings in the next few quarters. Hence, I am bullish on META stock now. Meta Platforms: Gearing Up for Another Strong Quarter Meta (formerly Facebook) is a part of the big tech  FAANG group, which also includes Amazon ( NASDAQ:AMZN ), Apple ( NASDAQ:AAPL ), Netflix ( NASDAQ:NFLX ), and Alphabet (formerly Google) ( NASDAQ:GOOGL ). Meta Platforms owns social media platforms Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, the recently launched Threads, and others. These fall under one of its segments, Family of Apps (FoA). Its augmented and virtual reality-related products and services fall under its other reportable segment, Reality Labs (RL). Reality Labs hasn’t been profitable for the company. In Q2, it reported a $3.7 billion operating loss, however, thanks to its FoA segment, which is making up for the damage done. It brought in $31.7 billion in revenue, accounting for a chunk of total revenue, resulting in a $13.1 billion operating profit. CEO Mark Zuckerberg had set 2023 as the "year of efficiency" and has been working hard to make that happen. It entailed layoffs, reducing spending on less significant projects, and focusing on more AI-related projects. During its Q2 earnings call, the company discussed how its AI-related investments over the years are finally paying off. Meta Stock: Powering Through AI Innovations Certainly, it has been a year of efficiency. Most recently, at Meta's Connect conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the company's new generative AI products, which sparked market excitement. Meta AI is an advanced conversational assistant that can generate text responses and photo-realistic images and is integrated with Meta's popular products, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. Meta AI is powered by Llama 2, its large language model, which it released in July in collaboration with Microsoft ( NASDAQ:MSFT ). The company intends to incorporate Meta AI into its mixed reality headset, Quest 3, and another new offering, a new generation of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The company will launch Quest 3 on October 10. Zuckerberg described Quest 3 as the best value in the industry for combining digital and real-world experiences at a low cost. Indeed, it is low-cost, priced at $500, while competing with Apple's Vision Pro Headset, which will come with a price tag of around $3,500. Apple's headset is set to hit the market in early 2024. What's more, its new generation of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, in collaboration with EssilorLuxottica, are priced at $299. The glasses will be launched in the third week of October. Meta claims the glasses can take pictures, record videos, and connect to social media. Along with these, Meta has added generative AI stickers to its messaging apps. It could use AI to unlock more monetary potential in the wildly popular messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $19 billion in 2014. More features from the company include its monthly subscription charges for ad-free Instagram and Facebook app use in Europe, which could be around 10 euros ($10.60 at current exchange rates). CFO Susan Li stated that the company's capital expenditures could rise in 2024 as it navigates AI and metaverse opportunities by expanding its workforce with more technical roles. Looking ahead, management anticipates revenue in the third quarter to be in the $32 billion to $34.5 billion range, representing an impressive 16% to 25% increase over Q3 2022. Meanwhile, analysts expect its revenue to be in the $29 billion to $34 billion range, with earnings estimates ranging from $2.27 to $4.27 per share, with the consensus EPS estimate landing at $3.59. On October 25, Meta will report its third-quarter earnings. Additionally, Meta closed its Q2 with a hefty cash balance of $53.5 billion and $18.3 billion in long-term debt. Given the company's rapid growth in revenue and profits, repaying the debt shouldn't be hard. Furthermore, it generated a sizable $11 billion in free cash flow in the quarter, which should aid in debt repayment and future project financing. While in pursuit of getting ahead in the AI race, Meta also believes this technology is still in its early stages and thus intends to build it responsibly. Is META Stock a Buy, According to Analysts? Turning to Wall Street, TipRanks rates Meta as a Strong Buy, with 40 Buys, two Holds, and no Sell ratings assigned in the past three months. The average META stock price target of $376.47 implies 19.35% upside potential. The highest price target for the stock stands at $435, while the lowest is at $285 per share. The Takeaway Summing up, sitting at a market cap of $811.6 billion, Meta is very close to joining the $1 trillion club. With Meta's efforts to monetize its social media apps and capitalize on the massive growth brought about by AI, the company is well-positioned to achieve this goal. Though the AI niche is enticing, it is also susceptible to market fluctuations. But for now, I share Wall Street's optimism about META stock's outstanding long-term prospects. Disclosure