American Tech Super Week: Mag 7 Earnings Reports, NVIDIA GTC Conference, Tech Stocks Leading U.S. Markets Again?

American Tech Super Week: Mag 7 Earnings Reports, NVIDIA GTC Conference, Tech Stocks Leading U.S. Markets Again?

This week will usher in the American technology industry’s “Super Week,” with markets intensely focused on it.

Among the “Tech Big Seven,” Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple, and Amazon will be releasing their earnings reports in quick succession, while AI chip giant Nvidia will hold its GTC conference, with CEO Jensen Huang's speech highly anticipated.

Market sentiment is already heating up. Goldman Sachs trader John Flood said that the current sentiment and positions around large tech stocks' earnings are the “friendliest” he has seen “in quite some time.” He expects that if there are no missteps in the earnings, the market will be ready for another “index-level surge led by super-capital technology.”

Earnings Season Focus: Cloud Growth & AI Spending

For the market, there are several key points to watch this earnings season.

First is the growth in cloud business. Last quarter, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure both grew over 30%, showing an accelerating trend, while industry leader Amazon AWS lagged significantly with growth of just 18%. According to Bloomberg, Amazon shareholders are closely watching whether AWS can speed up this quarter. Meanwhile, Google Cloud’s recent partnerships with Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic have also made its performance highly notable.

Secondly, capital expenditure will be an important indicator of tech giants’ AI ambitions. Markets will closely watch the scale of investment by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta in data centers and AI infrastructure. Especially for Meta, which has no public cloud business, whether its advertising revenue can continuously support its large-scale capital and operating expenditure in AI will be a key earnings point. In addition, Google’s search advertising growth rate will be scrutinized to evaluate whether new applications like ChatGPT are impacting its core business.

Market Expectations Maxed Out

According to analyst forecast data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, the market generally has high expectations for the tech giants’ results.

  • Apple: Expected revenue this quarter is $102.088 billion, up 7.5% year-on-year; EPS is $1.76, up 81% year-on-year. The market expects its new iPhone 17 to boost sales, but there are signs consumers prefer lower-priced basic models, which may cause revenue growth to fall short of expectations.
  • Microsoft: Expected revenue this quarter is $75.387 billion, up 14.9% year-on-year; EPS is $3.66, up 10.9% year-on-year.
  • Alphabet (Google’s parent company): Expected revenue this quarter is $100.11 billion, up 13.4% year-on-year; EPS is $2.27, up 7% year-on-year.
  • Meta Platforms: Expected revenue this quarter is $49.388 billion, up 21.7% year-on-year; EPS is $6.72, up 11.4% year-on-year.
  • Amazon: Expected revenue this quarter is $177.7 billion, up 11.8% year-on-year; EPS is $1.56, up 9% year-on-year.

Nvidia GTC Conference: AI Barometer

Besides the earnings reports, Nvidia’s GTC conference in Washington is another major focus this week. The event is primarily targeted at developers, customers, and business partners in the AI ecosystem.

CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech scheduled for Tuesday is expected to once again ignite enthusiasm for AI in the market. Although events like this are mainly meant to drum up momentum for Nvidia’s own business, they are also seen as important windows for capturing the latest technical and commercial trends in the AI field.

Market Sentiment Optimistic, Goldman Sachs Positive About Outlook

Before key events land, the optimism among investors is already evident. Goldman Sachs’ hedge fund business head Tony Pasquariello summarized that the current trend in core assets remains unchanged, and any bearish rhetoric will face the challenge of fighting against the Fed, U.S. fiscal stimulus, and the massive spending by large tech companies themselves.

The challenge for any bearish rhetoric is: you are up against the Fed… and U.S. fiscal stimulus… and the spending of large tech stocks.

The bank’s trading division even ranked super-large-cap tech stocks by strength of position: Google, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, Amazon, and Apple, showing strong confidence in specific companies. If this week’s earnings and industry developments confirm this optimism, tech stocks could see a new wave of upward momentum.

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