Wall Street ends sharply higher, lifted by soaring Microsoft

Wall Street ends sharply higher, lifted by soaring Microsoft

By Noel Randewich

Thu July 30, 2026  

Microsoft made history today when due to its exuberant Q2 report, it enjoyed the biggest single day valuation growth in Wall Street history. Its report not only eased fears of the enormous AI spending but boosted the company’s value an extra $450 billion. But Apple, which has been more cost conscious on AI, today overtook Nvidia to once again become the world’s most valuable company with a market cap of almost $5 trillion. Most AI companies are considered “battleground stocks” and investors would like to see them move to “trusted AI winners” and hoping that’s what will now happen to Microsoft and that others will soon follow suit. Amazon and Apple will be reporting tomorrow.  

These positive numbers combined with the latest projection of Q2 earnings growth jumping to 40% (39 Monday, 26 two weeks ago, 19 in April) triggered a massive straight up jump in all three indexes. The Dow recouped half of Wednesday’s losses, tech recovering everything and then some with the Nasdaq gaining 150% of yesterday’s dip. But the S&P continues to trade at 20x earnings vs an historical average of 10x. GDP grew at 1.5% vs a 2.1% estimate but another report showed inflation showed inflation slowing. This in turn changed the odds of a September rate hike from 82% last week to 59% today. Volume came in at 18.0 billion vs 17.2 average. Some Wall Street humor – the 18.0 billion is described today as heavy trading. A month ago, 18 would have been called exceptionally light. Go figure.  

DJ: 51,594.14 -1153.18        NAS: 24,442.94  -433.97        S&P: 7,316.15  -112.63         7/29

DJ: 52,208.06  +613.92        NAS: 25,122.18  +679.24       S&P: 7,437.63  21.48           7/30

Thu 7-30-26 4:30 pm Wall Street ends sharply higher, lifted by soaring Microsoft | Reuters