CLOSING BELL | | Good afternoon, and happy Friday. Well, it would have been if tech, semiconductors, and just about everything on the Nasdaq were not in the deep red today. It was the end of a nine week winning streak for the S&P 500. | The good news is that the jobs report from the Department of Labor was strong, about 172k, about double the estimate. Unemployment was unchanged, but payroll additions in the last three months are at their best pace since 2024. Unfortunately, good job openings make it harder for the newly restocked Fed to decide on cutting rates. Traders are pricing in a rate hike this year. | Coupled with Broadcom's meet, not beat report, and falling Bitcoin prices, tech faced a major selloff. Technology fell roughly -6%, $SOXL dropping -28% turns the AI/semi pullback from “healthy consolidation” into “somebody check the leverage.”
Stocks was locked on the selloff itself, with $QQQ, $SPY, and $SOXL leading the live pulse as traders argued over dip-buying, broken tech momentum, Bitcoin stress, and SpaceX IPO FOMO. | | Today's Briefing: | After the Bell: Meta fell after a report said it may raise billions to fund its AI buildout Stocks: Earnings season recap IPO News: SpaceX lost the fast S&P 500 path, but IPO demand is still running at double supply ST Editor's Picks
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| | | | AFTER THE BELL
Meta Passes the Hat Around | Alphabet is near a 4-week losing streak on its $85B equity sale, and it might not be the only one: a Financial Times report found Meta was considering the same idea. The stock fell as traders saw ‘raise billions’ and thought, ‘not from me.’ | The company called it speculation, but investors heard “AI needs more money” and immediately checked their wallets. | The RIP: $META ( ▼ 5.51% ) fell -6%; FT reported a potential raise of tens of billions of dollars. Meta’s 2026 capex guidance is up to $145B from $135B. Alphabet plans an $85B equity sale and up to $190B of 2026 capex. Community on Stocktwits was bullish, message volume is high across ~597.5K Watchers. | Trending posts: | @CasperPuff: "$META well I just spent my life savings on that dip" (post) @hm96: "$META hope some of you take the opportunity to add at these levels. This is a no brainer long term." (post) @howardlindzon: "$META needs to raise money to keep losing ai fun to watch I need to unpick them from my direct Index strategy..." (post)
| The timing stinks because the Nasdaq is already getting smoked, semis are falling like rocks, and investors are suddenly less patient with the AI spending arms race. Meta’s problem is not whether AI matters. It is whether shareholders want to bankroll it before the payoff shows up.
| Sound off in $META: AI spend or dilution → STOCKS
The Earnings Beatdown | The S&P 500 just wrapped one of its strongest earnings seasons since the post-pandemic profit boom, and the scorecard looked ridiculous on paper. Well mostly wrapped, there are still laggards reporting, but today’s Daily Rip edition is a good a time as any to run through the earnings season: | The RIP: According to FactSet and Nasdaq, 84%-85% of S&P 500 companies beat EPS estimates, 81% beat revenue estimates, earnings grew 28.4%-28.6% year-over-year, revenue grew 11.6%, net profit margin hit 14.8%, and the forward P/E climbed to 21.1x-21.2x. | | According to FactSet, corporate America did not just clear a low bar. Analysts were actually raising numbers during the season, with bottom-up EPS estimates rising 2.5% from March 31 to May 28, the biggest first-two-months-of-quarter increase since Q3 2021. | That is the part bulls will cling to. FactSet’s data showed strong revenue growth, widening margins, and more positive than negative Q2 EPS guidance, so this was not only a “cost cuts saved the day” quarter. | Tech Ate the Tape |  | Technology was the only sector where the whole thing lined up: earnings growth, revenue growth, beat rates, and stock returns. |
| According to FactSet, Information Technology posted 53.4% earnings growth, 29.8% revenue growth, and a 97% EPS beat rate. SIFMA’s May market data showed the sector also returned 16.0%for the month. That is not a sector report card. That is a victory lap with a GPU invoice attached. | Communication Services also looked strong on the earnings line, with 48.9% growth, but there was a catch big enough to show up in the footnotes. FactSet said the sector would have shown an earnings decline without Alphabet and Meta. | Consumer Discretionary had the same problem in a different outfit. According to FactSet, the sector grew earnings 40.4%, but without Amazon, that drops to 16.1%. Still good. Much less “behold the consumer renaissance.” | Beats Were Boring | This was the real lesson of the season: the market did not pay for beats. It paid for changed stories. | FactSet found companies with positive EPS surprises gained an average of 1.1% from two days before their report through two days after. Companies with negative EPS surprises fell an average of 4.6%, much worse than the five-year average decline of 2.9%. | Chart 3: Top and Bottom Post-Earnings Moves | | The Mag 7 Math | It has to be mentioned that despite this weeks Mag seven beat down in prices, the stocks outperformed the rest of the index yet again when it came to reports. According to FactSet, the Mag 7 posted 63.2% earnings growth, while the other 493 S&P 500 companies grew earnings 17.4%. That second number matters because it means the rest of the index was not dead weight. | But the headline acceleration still leaned heavily on Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. FactSet flagged those four as top contributors to S&P 500 earnings growth, with Micron the only non-Mag 7 name in the top-five group. | What Investors Learned | The big takeaway is not that earnings were strong. Everyone can see that. The takeaway is that strong earnings became the baseline. | Investors rewarded companies that turned earnings into a forward-looking upgrade. Dell did it with AI servers. GE Vernova did it with data-center power demand. Intel and AMD did it by showing the AI trade is widening beyond Nvidia. | They punished companies where the print felt already priced in. Palantir beat and raised, but valuation did the talking. Synopsys beat and raised, but investors sold the premium multiple. Walmart and Target showed that retail numbers can look fine while guidance still makes traders reach for the sell button. | This was one of the strongest S&P 500 earnings seasons since 2021. But it was not a simple “earnings beat equals stock up” season. It was a “prove the next leg” season. |
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| | | | | IPO NEWS
SpaceX Loses Index, But Demand Is Still Double Supply | SpaceX’s IPO story got louder Friday, with investor demand reportedly running ahead of supply even after S&P refused to fast-track the rocket, satellite, and AI company into the S&P 500. The market got the rare combo platter: record IPO hype, no automatic index sugar rush, and valuation math from the future. | The RIP: SpaceX is seeking $75B at $135 per share, targeting a $1.75T to $1.8T valuation. Reuters said demand is more like $150B. Pricing is expected June 11, with Nasdaq trading expected June 12. Goldman sees AI revenue at XAI jumping 100X in just five years to $322B by 2030. | The S&P decision changes the narrative a bit. Fast index entry would have created forced passive buying from funds tied to the benchmark. Without it, the IPO still has enormous demand, but investors lose one of the cleanest flow-based bull cases. The bigger debate is whether SpaceX is a generational must-own or a giant crowd trade priced on Mars math. | | Make your $SPCX case: moonshot or crowded trade → | We are bringing you a special Daily Rip edition next week, around June 11th, a feature-length piece on the SpaceX IPO. Look out for the send just before lunchtime ET, to find out everything I can compile about the world record public offering: what it means for the space and AI industries, and stock trading as we know it. |
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| | | | | TRENDING ON STOCKTWITS
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