Pre-Markets in the Green on Last Trading Day of the Month

It’s the last day of the month, and we’re through the first third of calendar Q4. It’s also Halloween, and we’re seeing pre-market participants filling their bags with goodies on the last trading day of the week. The Dow is up +55 points at this hour, the S&P 500 is +50, the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up big — +350 points! — and the small-cap Russell 2000 is actually down at this hour by -1 point.

Strong earnings reports yesterday afternoon from Mag 7 bellwethers Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) have helped advance the Nasdaq beyond the other indexes at this hour. Apple shares are up +2% so far this morning, while Amazon — considered a nowhere trade for years — has blasted off +13% in today’s pre-market. Its AWS cloud services segment grew a very strong +20% year over year.

This morning was also supposed to bring us September numbers for Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), the Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation. The federal government shutdown, as you likely know by now, is keeping this report from being released. When we last saw PCE data, +2.7% was the year-over-year headline, +2.91% on core. This core number had increased four straight months from +2.62% in April, but still below the +2.97% we had seen in February of this year.

Q3 Earnings Reports Ahead of the Open: XOM, CVX & More

ExxonMobil (XOM) is out with Q3 earnings figures this morning, ultimately painting a mixed picture with earnings of $1.88 per share outpacing the $1.81 in the Zacks consensus by +3.87%. Revenues of $85.29 billion missed estimates by -1.7%. Shares are down -1% in today’s early trading, subtracting from the mild +6.6% gains year to date.

Oil supermajor competitor Chevron (CVX) also posted mixed results in its Q3 report ahead of today’s opening bell. Earnings of $1.85 per share surpassed the Zacks consensus of $1.66 by an impressive +11.45%, but revenues of $49.73 billion were -7.2% short of estimates. Yet shares are up +1.5% on the news, adding to the company’s +6% gains in 2025 thus far.

Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy)-rated T. Rowe Price (TROW) also had a noteworthy earnings beat this morning, at $2.81 per share versus expectations for +2.55 (a beat of greater than +10%). Revenues of $1.89 billion amounted to a +2.34% beat, and the stock is up +1% on the news. Year to date, shares are still negative as of now. 

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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