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Strong Earnings from Small Caps, & Top Market Stories: AAPL, GOOGL, FB | Free Lunch

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On today’s episode of Free Lunch, Associate Stock Strategist Ryan McQueeney recaps Apple’s earnings report, highlights Google’s plan to reenter China, and discusses Facebook’s new user experience changes. Later, the host puts the spotlight on three small cap stocks making noise after their earnings reports.

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Free Lunch is the newest show from Zacks Investment Research. It is streamed live, four times per week, and features breaking news and analysis from Zacks strategists. Free Lunch is available on YouTube, Facebook Live, Twitter, Ustream, and more.

First on the docket today was the latest earnings report from Apple (AAPL - Free Report) . It was another great quarter for the tech behemoth, with increased revenue from iPhone sales and Services offsetting a near plateau in actual iPhone unit sales. The stock surged in morning trading and inched even closer to the $1 trillion market cap milestone.

Meanwhile, new reports today suggested that Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) is planning to reenter the Chinese search market with a censored version of Google. The controversial plan was leaked by a concerned whistleblower and would see Google filter out websites and search terms which have been flagged by China’s government.

Also making headlines was Facebook’s new initiatives aimed at helping users manage their time on its platforms. Both Facebook and Instagram will soon launch an activity dashboard and alert users when they have reach daily time thresholds on the respective apps. These new features are part of Facebook’s continued efforts to shift its focus back toward quality interactions.

Ryan recaps all of these stories, giving investors exactly what they need to know—and providing his own opinions and perspectives—on the first half of today’s show.

Later, he recaps the earnings reports of Pandora , Zendesk and SodaStream .

Investors have certainly been more interested in smaller-cap stocks in 2018, and small-cap indexes have benefitted from that interest. But as Ryan shows through these reports, business is also booming for many of these companies.

For instance, Pandora has rebounded well by shifting toward a paid-first business model. Meanwhile, Zendesk is growing its enterprise software platform, and SodaStream is continuing to benefit from interest in healthier beverage options.

Ryan digs into all of these reports on the second half of today’s show. At the end of the episode, he fields questions related to Micron (MU - Free Report) and U.S. Steel (X - Free Report) . Make sure to check out the show to hear more!

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