Apple and Amazon Shrug Off to halt streaming production in comments on Wall Street
Strong earnings and stock performance follow testimony from the four tech titans at an antitrust hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to determine whether these companies are too big and should be taken down. Executives argued that they faced fierce competition among their companies and were doing far more good than bad anyway.
It will soon be easier to afford a share or two of Apple, which declared a 4-for-1 stock split as of August 31. The company’s sales of nearly $ 60 billion in the quarter were up 11% from a year ago. It also set a date of October to start shipping the next iPhone.
Amazon shares closed up 3.7% at $ 3,164, a daily high of $ 3,244. Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns 11% of the company, which means his net worth has increased by about $ 7 billion in one day, according to MarketWatch calculations. Amazon reported sales of $ 88.9 billion for the quarter. He ended the day with a market cap of around $ 1.6 trillion.
Facebook shares also roared, gaining more than 8% to close at a new high of $ 253 and a market cap of $ 724 billion. Sales for the three months ended June increased 11% year-over-year to $ 18.7 billion and global users reached $ 2.7 billion.
All three have outperformed the market as a whole. The DJIA rose by 0.44% and the highly technological Nasdaq by 1.49%.
Alphabet was the only one to fall in tech during Friday’s session, slipping 2.17% to $ 1,482 for a market cap of just over $ 1 trillion.