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Apple last month became the first company in the world to reach
a market value of $3 trillion, buoyed by hopes over its
expansion in new markets and expectations for more moderate U.S.
interest rate hikes.
Strong quarterly earnings from companies such as Alphabet, Meta
Platforms, chipmaker Intel and chip equipment maker Lam Research
lifted overall market sentiment last month.
Facebook-owner Meta's market cap jumped more than 10% in July,
thanks to the company's rosy revenue forecast and robust ad
revenue growth in the second quarter.
Microsoft also beat Wall Street estimates for its fiscal
fourth-quarter revenue, driven by growth in its cloud computing
and office software businesses, although its share price slipped
back 1.4% in July after it also laid out an aggressive spending
plan to meet demand for artificial intelligence services.
Its market cap stood at $2.49 trillion at the end of July.
Apple is due to announce its earnings for the April-June quarter
on Thursday.
"We continue to strongly believe a new tech bull market has
started this year, and we believe the AI Gold Rush is a "1995
Moment" akin to the start of the Internet and NOT a 1999/2000
Bubble Moment," said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a note last
week.
In the financial sector, JP Morgan Chase's market cap grew about
8.6% last month, as the largest U.S. lender earned more from
borrowers' interest payments and benefited from the purchase of
First Republic Bank.
Refinitiv data shows 69% of large- and mid-cap U.S. companies
have surpassed analysts' Q2 earnings estimates so far, with the
tech sector accounting for 82% of these positive surprises.
(Reporting By Patturaja Murugaboopathy and Gaurav Dogra in
Bengaluru; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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