US Indices End Week Higher As Amazon Earnings Lift Sentiment, But Nasdaq Logs Worst Month In Over A Year — PSKY, BABA, RDDT, RIVN, AMZN In Focus

• The S&P 500 ended 0.7% higher, while the Nasdaq 100 rose 0.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 0.5% higher.
• California’s governor warns that an antitrust lawsuit on Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. could derail entertainment industry jobs.
• Amazon surged 15% after reporting better-than-expected second-quarter revenue. 

U.S. stock indices ended higher on Friday and broke past two consecutive weeks of decline as investors cheered strong quarterly earnings from Microsoft and Amazon. 

The S&P 500 ended 0.7% higher, while the Nasdaq 100 rose 0.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 0.5% higher. The Russell 2000, which tracks stocks with small market capitalizations, fell 0.5%.

Among ETFs tracking benchmark indexes, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) added 0.4%, and Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) ended Friday 0.3% higher, while the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (DIA) rose 0.5%.

Meanwhile, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) rose 0.1%, as gains in Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO) offset weakness in Micron Tech (MU), AMD and ASML Holdings (ASML). The broader Vanguard Information Technology ETF (VGT) fell 1%, tracking weakness in Apple (AAPL).  

Retail sentiment on Stocktwits for SPY and QQQ was ‘bearish’ and ‘neutral’ for the DIA, with ‘high’ message volumes.

US Market Drivers

Apart from key earnings results from big-tech companies, the U.S. Federal Reserve left its interest rate unchanged in Kevin Warsh’s second decision as Governor. Latest inflation numbers still remain above the central bank’s 2% target, and investors seem to be growing jittery about the Fed’s plan to curb soaring price pressures. 

The 30-year Treasury bond yield rose about 4 basis points to 5.25%, marking its highest level since 2007. Meanwhile, the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed above 4.7%, its highest since January 2025. 

“The tailwind to the dollar from resilient US economic activity is outweighed by Fed Chair Kevin Warsh failure to turn tough inflation rhetoric into a credible policy, increasing the risk the Fed falls behind the curve in containing inflation,” Elias Haddad at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co told Bloomberg in an interview.

Trending Stocks To Watch 

Paramount Skydance (PSKY): California Gov. Gavin Newsom has voiced major concerns regarding the state's antitrust lawsuit attempting to halt Paramount's $81-billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Alibaba (BABA): Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot AI is powering its flagship models using a compute agreement with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. that grants access to a cluster of around 20,000 Nvidia Corp. processors. 

Reddit (RDDT):  The company secured a major procedural victory in its legal battle against unauthorized artificial intelligence data harvesting, after a federal judge denied motions to dismiss key claims alleging that AI platform Perplexity AI and web-scraping vendor SerpApi illegally bypassed technical safeguards to scrape community content. 

Rivian (RIVN): Several Wall Street analysts flagged profitability challenges for the electric vehicle maker despite stronger-than-expected second-quarter results and an improved outlook. 

Roblox Corp (RBLX): Shares were down 27% following the company’s mixed second-quarter results and a lower-than-expected revenue guidance for the third quarter.   

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