Stock Market Live October 30: S&P 500 (SPY) Digesting Meta and Microsoft Earnings

After several record-setting days, markets are flat to down at the moment.

Dow futures are down 139, as the S&P 500 fights to hold on to a single point. The NASDAQ is up about three points. All as investors digest the latest round of earnings. Plus, President Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping seems to have gone well, with rare earth restrictions lifted.

Earnings Were Mixed from Mag 7 Stocks

With earnings, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG | GOOG Price Prediction) popped after posting strong results. EPS of $3.10 was better than expectations of $2.33. Revenue of $102.35 billion was also better than the estimates of $99.89 billion. The company also posted solid numbers in its cloud business thanks to growing demand for artificial intelligence.  And it increased capex for 2025.

“With the growth across our business and demand from Cloud customers, we now expect 2025 capital expenditures to be in a range of $91 billion to $93 billion,” the company said in its earnings report, as quoted by CNBC.

Meanwhile, Meta (NASDAQ: META) is down about 9% in premarket on its earnings. While META posted its highest revenue growth since 2024, it did get hit with a one-time charge of $15.93 billion. EPS of $7.25 was better than the estimates of $6.69. Revenue of $51.24 billion was better than the estimates of $49.41 billion. 

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is down about 2% in premarket on earnings. The company took a one-time hit of $3.1 billion in net income because of its investment in OpenAI. Net income still rose to $27.7 billion, or $3.72 a share, from $24.67 billion, or $3.30 a share, year over year.

Beijing Delayed Its Rare Earth Curbs 

Beijing paused export controls on rare earths for a year, while Trump cut fentanyl-linked tariffs, following a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

China will continue to dominate rare earths for the foreseeable future.

After all, as noted by CNBC, “China is the undisputed leader of the critical minerals supply chain, producing roughly 70% of the world’s supply of rare earths and processing almost 90%, which means it is importing these materials from other countries and processing them.”

Slightly helping, Trump did sign an agreement with Japan to help secure minerals. minerals. That’s in addition to deals with Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand.