New Record Closing Highs Ahead of Fed Cut, Mag 7 Earnings

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

New record-high closes for three of the four top market indexes happened again today, even as they were off intra-day highs. The Dow gained +161 points (+0.34%) to 47,706 for the first time in history, the S&P 500 rose +15 points (+0.23%) to 6890, the Nasdaq +190 points (+0.80%) to 23,837. The small-cap Russell 2000 will have to wait another day to set a new closing high: it was -13 points (-0.55%) on the session.

With 7000 for the S&P 500 clearly on the horizon, several of its top members by market cap report earnings this week. These include Microsoft MSFT, Meta META, Apple AAPL and Amazon AMZN. NVIDIA NVDA, now trading at an astonishing $4.89 TRILLION market cap, won’t report earnings for another four weeks. Including both A and B shares for Alphabet, Broadcom AVGO, Tesla TSLA and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) round out the top 10 — all trillion-dollar-plus market caps.

Speaking of Amazon, ahead of Thursday afternoon’s earnings release, the e-commerce monolith has announced it will cut its overall workforce by 14K — on its way to a possibly 30K cuts to its payrolls. This comes as the company continues to invest in AI, reallocating resources in its efforts to keep up with huge AI spending from Oracle ORCL and Microsoft, among others.
 

Quarterly Earnings Releases After Tuesday’s Close

Visa V reported fiscal Q4 earnings this afternoon, typically beating on earnings by a slim margin — in this case, by a penny to $2.98 per share, above the $2.71 per share reported in the year-ago quarter). Revenues grew +12% year over year, beating the Zacks consensus to $10.72 billion in the quarter. The credit card major posted +9% Total Payments Volume and +10% on Processed Transactions. Shares are up narrowly in late trading, +9.8% year to date.

Booking.com BKNG outperformed estimates on both top and bottom lines this afternoon, with earnings of $99.50 per share easily surpassing the $96.11 in the Zacks consensus or $9.01 billion in sales, above the $8.72 billion analysts were looking for. Steady demand trends in travel during the quarter demonstrate the consumer is holding their own. Shares have zigzagged on the news, but presently are up +5%.

International snack giant Mondelez MDLZ reports a narrow earnings beat today: 73 cents per share versus expectations for 72 cents. Revenues of $9.74 billion are exactly in-line with the Zacks consensus. Pricing rose +8%, mostly overseas, though North America’s +1.5% was light of analyst expectations. Shares are down -4.5% in late trading, swinging to negative growth year to date.
 

What to Expect from the Stock Market Tomorrow

Clearly, the pending quarter-point interest rate cut from the concluding Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting is the big news for Wednesday’s markets. However, these record-high indexes already illustrate we’ve banked this move — along with the 25 bps cut expected at the December meeting. This would bring the Fed funds rate to 3.50-3.75% by the end of 2025, and that low for the first time in three years.

We also get a massive amount of Q3 earnings data tomorrow, mostly after the bell. Companies include the aforementioned Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft, and also Boeing BA, Chipotle CMG and Starbucks SBUX. Of these, only Microsoft was +2% today, while Chipotle and Starbucks traded down -2%.

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