Stock market today: Wall Street surges before the bell on strong tech earnings

Wall Street surged early Thursday with a string of major U.S. companies posting strong quarterly earnings in an economic environment that has grown increasingly uncertain as the U.S. upends long-standing trade policies.

Futures for the S&P 500 jumped 1.2%, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.8%. Nasdaq futures rose 1.8%, pulled higher by technology giants who issued better-than-forecast results.

Microsoft climbed 9.2% in off-hours trading after the software giant said sales in its cloud computing and artificial intelligence business contributed to a 13% increase in revenue and an even bigger jump in profits. Both figures beat Wall Street estimates.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also handily beat analysts targets for revenue and profit in the period. Meta said strong advertising revenue on its social media platforms was boosted by artificial intelligence tools and its shares climbed 6.4%.

On the losing side was McDonald's, which saw its same store sales in the U.S. plunge by the most since 2020, when the pandemic effectively shut down the retail, dining and travel sectors.

Much like Chipotle last week, McDonald's said its store traffic fell unexpectedly as economic uncertainty weighed on diners. McDonald's shares fell less than 1% before the bell.

General Motors lowered its profit expectations for 2025 on Thursday, citing a tariff impact of between $4 billion and $5 billion. , GM now foresees full-year adjusted earnings before interest and taxes in a range of $10 billion to $12.5 billion.

GM said earlier this week that it was reassessing its projections for the year and investors, now with new guidance from the automaker, sent its shares up 2.8%.

Uncertainty about what President Donald Trump's trade war will do to the U.S. economy remains a key focus for investors.

The U.S. has been hit with the threat of a worst-case scenario called ''stagflation,'' one where the economy stagnates yet inflation remains high. Economists fear it because the Federal Reserve has no good tools to fix both problems at the same time. If the Fed were to try to help one problem by adjusting interest rates, it would likely make the other worse.

A more comprehensive report on the job market from the U.S. government arrives Friday. The on-again-off-again rollout of U.S. tariffs has created a lot of uncertainty about what's to come.

The confusion has led to historic swings for financial markets, from stocks to bonds to the value of the U.S. dollar, that battered investors.

Many markets around the world were closed for May Day, or international Labor Day holidays.

At midday in London, Britain's FTSE 100 inched up less than 0.1%.

Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 1.1% to finish at 36,452.30. As expected, the Bank of Japan decided to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged as worries mount over the impact of Trump's policies. The central bank also cut its economic growth forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2026 by more than half, to 0.5% from 1.1% three months ago.

''Considering the significant downgrading of growth and inflation forecasts in its Quarterly Outlook Report, the central bank will likely take a long pause to assess the impact of high global trade policy uncertainty on growth and inflation,'' Shigeto Nagai of Oxford Economics said in a report.

The U.S. dollar rose to 144.39 Japanese yen from 143.06 yen. The euro cost $1.1326, inching down from $1.1331.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.2% to 8,145.60.

In energy trading, U.S. benchmark crude shed $1.34 to $56.87 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up $1.29 to $59.77 a barrel.