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It’s a very newsworthy day on Wall Street today, with the biggest amount of consequential earnings reports — including three of the “Mag 7” — joining the latest FOMC meeting, where the Fed decided to keep rates steady as expected. Market indexes were flattish ahead of the Fed news, and closed without changing much: the Dow +0.025%, the S&P 500 -0.01%, the Nasdaq +0.17% and the small-cap Russell 2000 -0.49%.
Notes on Today’s Fed Decision & Powell Presser
As expected, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided not to move on Fed funds rate levels from the 3.50-3.75% range today. This follows three straight cuts of 25 basis points (bps) which helped bring the rate down 175 bps from near-term highs last seen in September 2024. There were again two dissenters, Fed Governors Stephen Miran and Chris Waller — that latter of whom has made the short list to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell at the end of his term in May.
That said, the dissenting votes were both for 25 bps, the first time Miran has not voted for a 50 bps cut since he joined the Fed last September. The Fed said the economy has “expanded at a solid pace” and is “coming into 2026 on firm footing.” Unemployment shows “some signs of stabilization” and inflation remains “somewhat elevated.” Thus, the monetary policy agency see both of its objectives within reasonable ranges, and ultimately found not enough compelling reason to cut rates further. The next FOMC meeting takes place March 17-18.
In Chair Powell’s press conference following the Fed statement, he did not answer questions regarding charges pending against him from the Dept. of Justice (really the White House, which has been putting pressure on Powell & Co. to cut rates since President Trump moved back into the residence a year ago), instead referring to his public statement on January 11th, where he pointed at the administration and its pressure campaign as the reason for the lawsuit.
Mag 7 Earnings Extravaganza: MSFT, META, TSLA
Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) shares slid initially on a complex report which included beats on both top and bottom lines. Earnings of $4.14 per share easily strode past the $3.88 Zacks consensus on $81.27 billion in revenues, outpacing expectations of $80.23 billion and the $69.63 billion reported a year ago. The software giant and AI hyperscaler releases guidance numbers on the upcoming conference call.
Its cloud business, Azure, brought in $39.0 billion in the quarter, slightly below the $39.4 billion consensus, but the big news following the report’s release concerns the Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) in its AI space, which have ballooned up +110% to $625 billion, 45% of which are directly related to Microsoft’s exposure to OpenAI. Back in October, Microsoft spent $135 billion for a 27% stake in OpenAI.
Capital expenditures rose +66% in the quarter to $37.5 billion, and commercial cloud revenue — based on Microsoft’s Copilot AI service — gained +17% in the quarter. It will be some time before the market digests this massive RPO situation, but suffice it to say Microsoft is “all in” on the AI market. Shares are trading down -4% in the after-market.
Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) trotted out its own report of humongous numbers, with firm outperformances on both top and bottom lines — earnings of $8.88 per share on revenues of $59.89 billion surpassed the $8.21 per share and $59.59 billion estimates, respectively — and a strong raise to current-quarter revenue guidance. Based on Meta’s massive continued investment in the AI space, the company now sees capex for fiscal 2026 coming in at $115-135 billion, from $110 billion projected earlier. Shares are up +5% in late trading.
Tesla (TSLA - Free Report) posted mixed results in its Q4 report after today’s market close, with earnings of 50 cents per share outperforming estimates by a solid nickel while revenues of $24.90 billion was off the $25.14 billion anticipated. Both items are still well off the pace of a year ago. That said, the company says its new Cybercab is on-track for 2026 production. Shares of Tesla are +3% on the news, still -1% year to date.
Image: Bigstock
Fed Pauses, Mag 7 Brings Earnings Beats
Wednesday, January 28th, 2026
It’s a very newsworthy day on Wall Street today, with the biggest amount of consequential earnings reports — including three of the “Mag 7” — joining the latest FOMC meeting, where the Fed decided to keep rates steady as expected. Market indexes were flattish ahead of the Fed news, and closed without changing much: the Dow +0.025%, the S&P 500 -0.01%, the Nasdaq +0.17% and the small-cap Russell 2000 -0.49%.
Notes on Today’s Fed Decision & Powell Presser
As expected, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided not to move on Fed funds rate levels from the 3.50-3.75% range today. This follows three straight cuts of 25 basis points (bps) which helped bring the rate down 175 bps from near-term highs last seen in September 2024. There were again two dissenters, Fed Governors Stephen Miran and Chris Waller — that latter of whom has made the short list to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell at the end of his term in May.
That said, the dissenting votes were both for 25 bps, the first time Miran has not voted for a 50 bps cut since he joined the Fed last September. The Fed said the economy has “expanded at a solid pace” and is “coming into 2026 on firm footing.” Unemployment shows “some signs of stabilization” and inflation remains “somewhat elevated.” Thus, the monetary policy agency see both of its objectives within reasonable ranges, and ultimately found not enough compelling reason to cut rates further. The next FOMC meeting takes place March 17-18.
In Chair Powell’s press conference following the Fed statement, he did not answer questions regarding charges pending against him from the Dept. of Justice (really the White House, which has been putting pressure on Powell & Co. to cut rates since President Trump moved back into the residence a year ago), instead referring to his public statement on January 11th, where he pointed at the administration and its pressure campaign as the reason for the lawsuit.
Mag 7 Earnings Extravaganza: MSFT, META, TSLA
Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) shares slid initially on a complex report which included beats on both top and bottom lines. Earnings of $4.14 per share easily strode past the $3.88 Zacks consensus on $81.27 billion in revenues, outpacing expectations of $80.23 billion and the $69.63 billion reported a year ago. The software giant and AI hyperscaler releases guidance numbers on the upcoming conference call.
Its cloud business, Azure, brought in $39.0 billion in the quarter, slightly below the $39.4 billion consensus, but the big news following the report’s release concerns the Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) in its AI space, which have ballooned up +110% to $625 billion, 45% of which are directly related to Microsoft’s exposure to OpenAI. Back in October, Microsoft spent $135 billion for a 27% stake in OpenAI.
Capital expenditures rose +66% in the quarter to $37.5 billion, and commercial cloud revenue — based on Microsoft’s Copilot AI service — gained +17% in the quarter. It will be some time before the market digests this massive RPO situation, but suffice it to say Microsoft is “all in” on the AI market. Shares are trading down -4% in the after-market.
Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) trotted out its own report of humongous numbers, with firm outperformances on both top and bottom lines — earnings of $8.88 per share on revenues of $59.89 billion surpassed the $8.21 per share and $59.59 billion estimates, respectively — and a strong raise to current-quarter revenue guidance. Based on Meta’s massive continued investment in the AI space, the company now sees capex for fiscal 2026 coming in at $115-135 billion, from $110 billion projected earlier. Shares are up +5% in late trading.
Tesla (TSLA - Free Report) posted mixed results in its Q4 report after today’s market close, with earnings of 50 cents per share outperforming estimates by a solid nickel while revenues of $24.90 billion was off the $25.14 billion anticipated. Both items are still well off the pace of a year ago. That said, the company says its new Cybercab is on-track for 2026 production. Shares of Tesla are +3% on the news, still -1% year to date.
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