S&P 500 Poised to Climb as Wall Street Awaits Tesla and Meta Earnings After SpaceX and 3M Deliver Beats

Wall Street headed into Wednesday’s session split down the middle, with futures on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq pointing higher ahead of a high-stakes earnings triple-header from Tesla, Meta and IBM after the closing bell, even as futures tied to the Dow slipped. The divided premarket mood followed a mixed Tuesday session in which the Dow and S&P 500 managed modest gains while the Nasdaq finished essentially flat, as investors weighed a fresh batch of corporate results — headlined by a forecast-beating quarter from SpaceX and a raised outlook from 3M — against rising oil prices and stubbornly elevated bond yields.

Futures tied to the S&P 500 were up about 0.2 per cent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq was leading the way with gains of around 0.4 per cent in premarket trading, according to Barron’s, while Dow futures slipped roughly 0.1 per cent. The divergence captured the market’s current tension: renewed excitement about artificial intelligence and mega-cap technology names, set against a colder macro backdrop of crude above $110 a barrel and 10-year Treasury yields sitting at about 5.12 per cent.

The main event comes after the close, when Tesla, Meta Platforms and IBM all report third-quarter results. Tesla is expected to post adjusted earnings of roughly 43 to 45 cents a share on revenue of about $27.9 billion to $28.1 billion — broadly flat against last year, according to analyst estimates compiled by Benzinga Pro and FactSet. Meta is forecast to report revenue of about $63.3 billion, up roughly 24 per cent year on year, according to FactSet data cited by MarketWatch, with investors watching closely for evidence that its enormous spending on AI infrastructure is converting into advertising revenue growth. IBM, which closed 2.3 per cent higher on Tuesday, reports alongside the pair and has guided investors to expect full-year 2026 revenue growth of 4 to 5 per cent in constant currency.

Investors were already in an upbeat mood before the bell after SpaceX, the Elon Musk-led rocket and satellite company, reported third-quarter results after the market closed on Tuesday that comfortably beat Wall Street’s expectations. According to Benzinga Pro data reported via Longbridge, SpaceX posted quarterly revenue of $14.58 billion against analyst estimates of $12.74 billion, and earnings of 35 cents a share against a consensus of 12 cents. The stock jumped 8.1 per cent in after-hours trading to $159.70, as traders reacted to the scale of the beat and to Musk’s confirmation that special committees at both SpaceX and Tesla are formally examining the possibility of a merger between the two companies — a combination that would be valued at around $3.5 trillion.

SpaceX’s results mattered for more than its own shares. The company has rapidly become a bellwether for the AI build-out: its artificial intelligence operations have grown into one of its largest revenue contributors, and the surge in its stock overnight fed a broader recovery in technology names. As Patrick Munnelly, market strategist at Tickmill Group, put it in a Wednesday note carried by MarketWatch: “Global risk assets found firmer footing on Wednesday as robust technology earnings revived confidence in the AI trade, triggering a sharp recovery from last week’s chip sector drawdown.”

Tuesday’s regular session had offered a preview of the stock-picking environment that defined the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.02 per cent to close at 52,497.42 points, and the S&P 500 added 0.29 per cent to 7,712.76, while the Nasdaq Composite edged down 0.02 per cent to 26,424.82, according to Diário Económico’s market wrap. Beneath the index-level calm, individual stocks moved sharply on company-specific news.

Industrial giant 3M was one of the session’s standouts, jumping 5.8 per cent after reporting quarterly results that exceeded analyst estimates, with adjusted revenue of $6.6 billion, and lifting its full-year profit forecast. The company also announced an expanded partnership with Amazon for data-centre projects, which investors read as a sign of industrial strength feeding off the AI infrastructure boom.

General Motors moved violently in the opposite direction, falling 6.8 per cent despite reporting quarterly revenue of roughly $50 billion, above expectations. Investors reacted badly to the carmaker’s full-year outlook, a reminder that in this earnings season, guidance is being punished more harshly than trailing results are being rewarded. Netflix, meanwhile, fell 1.7 per cent in the regular session and then slid a further 5.8 per cent in after-hours trading to $64.72 after it narrowed its full-year 2026 revenue forecast to $51.1 billion — below analyst estimates — and issued weaker-than-expected sales guidance for the fourth quarter.

Elsewhere in technology, Super Micro Computer climbed about 16 per cent after releasing preliminary results suggesting revenue and profits had beaten estimates, while the semiconductor complex remained mixed: Micron slipped about 1 per cent, AMD and Intel eased, and Nvidia shed a fraction of a per cent, but Seagate advanced more than 2 per cent and CoreWeave gained 1.7 per cent. Salesforce’s announced agreement to acquire marketing platform Braze for about $5.66 billion was also in the mix; Braze surged 51.7 per cent on the deal while Salesforce itself closed essentially flat.

On the macro front, the mood was considerably less sunny. Brent crude was about 1.1 per cent higher at $110.03 a barrel as trading resumed in Asia, extending gains after touching a five-month high during a volatile Tuesday session, according to Reuters. Oil’s wild ride reflected competing headlines: continued attacks on shipping in the vital Strait of Hormuz and reports of a meeting between the Iranian president and Pakistan’s army chief — described by Reuters as a key US-Iran mediator — pulling in one direction, and unconfirmed reports of renewed mediation efforts in the Iran conflict, later thrown cold by statements from Tehran, pulling in the other. Westpac analysts noted that oil “fell on unconfirmed reports of renewed peace negotiations, before largely retracing the move after the reports were denied.”

Asian markets took their cue from the positive technology mood on Wednesday. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 1.5 per cent, led by a 4 per cent gain for Korean shares, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 climbed 1.3 per cent, Reuters reported. S&P 500 e-mini futures rose 0.3 per cent. South Korean AI infrastructure company Elice surged almost 30 per cent, rebounding from a post-IPO slump, according to Reuters’ Morning Bid.

Europe was the exception. French stocks fell as fears lingered around the government’s response to recent unrest, with Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu saying the government would reinforce police with a “massive” deployment of troops to quell protests planned for Saturday. The yield on the French 10-year OAT rose 2.7 basis points to 4.94 per cent, nudging the gap against the German 10-year bund a touch wider to 153.1 basis points, Reuters reported — a sign that institutional investors are demanding a larger premium to hold French debt while the political picture remains unsettled.

Analysis: Why It Matters

1. Tonight is the AI trade’s real test

All of the noise around the edges — SpaceX’s beat, Super Micro’s pop, the Korean rally — funnels into the same question tonight’s earnings will answer: is the enormous spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure actually turning into revenue and profit growth for the companies paying for it? Meta sits at the centre of that question. It is one of the world’s heaviest AI spenders, and its third quarter will show whether that capital expenditure is flowing through to advertising revenue — the business that still pays for everything else. Tesla faces a related but different version of the test: its core car business is expected to show flat revenue, so investors will be grading it on the AI and robotics story instead — Optimus, robotaxis, and now the potential SpaceX tie-up. Markets have shown they will forgive a weak quarter if the AI narrative holds; they will not forgive a weak narrative dressed up as a decent quarter. That asymmetry is what makes tonight’s reports the season’s defining moment so far.

2. SpaceX is becoming the market’s AI proxy

It is worth pausing on how much weight a single company now carries in market psychology. SpaceX’s numbers moved not just its own stock but the whole premarket tone for US tech. A year ago the AI narrative ran through chipmakers alone; now it runs through launch revenue, satellite connectivity and orbital data-centre ambitions. The beat against consensus, and the 161 per cent revenue jump highlighted by Barron’s, fed directly into the “AI optimism” that is pulling against “inflation fears” in this morning’s market commentary. The risk, of course, is concentration: when one company’s earnings can set the tone for global risk assets, the trade becomes reflexive — good news lifts everything, and any stumble hits far beyond the company itself. That is the same fragility that produced last week’s chip-sector drawdown, and it has not gone away just because this week’s tape is greener.

3. Oil above $110 is the macro spoiler

For all the excitement about earnings, the cold wind in this market is blowing from the Strait of Hormuz. Brent above $110 matters far beyond energy stocks: it feeds directly into inflation expectations, which feed into Treasury yields, which feed into the discount rates used to value every growth stock on the board. The oil market’s whipsaw on Tuesday — five-month highs, then a plunge on unconfirmed mediation reports, then a retracement after Tehran poured cold water on them — shows how much of the price is now geopolitical risk premium rather than supply-demand fundamentals. As long as that premium is one headline away from inflating or deflating, equity markets are trading with a live volatility feed in the background. The irony of the AI trade is that it is priced for disinflation and cheap capital; oil is priced for war. Only one of those can be right for long.

4. France is a reminder that politics lives in bond spreads

The French sell-off is small in index terms but large in what it signals. When a G7 government’s borrowing costs are being repriced daily against German bunds because of planned protests and troop deployments, the market is no longer pricing French bonds on economics alone — it is pricing them on politics. The 153-basis-point spread over bunds is the market’s way of saying that French fiscal and political risk is no longer a European edge case but a standing line item. For global investors, the read-across is uncomfortable: the same fiscal pressures — debt, deficits, political limits on tax rises — are visible in Britain and America too. France is just the market where the strain is currently showing most clearly.

5. The 86 per cent stat flatters to deceive

One number doing the rounds this week deserves a sceptical look: with about 13 per cent of S&P 500 companies having reported, 86 per cent have beaten earnings estimates, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters. That sounds like a triumph. It is, at best, incomplete. Beat rates are high partly because estimates were set low in a year of tariff uncertainty and patchy guidance, and partly because early reporters skew toward companies confident enough to go first. The history of earnings seasons is that beat rates fall as the season broadens out to weaker names. More importantly, the market’s recent behaviour — GM down 7 per cent on a revenue beat, Netflix down 6 per cent on narrowed guidance — shows that the beat itself is no longer the point. The bar that matters is the outlook, and outlooks are being set in an environment of $110 oil, 5 per cent-plus bond yields and unresolved trade disputes. An 86 per cent beat rate is a snapshot of the past; tonight’s Tesla and Meta guidance will say much more about the future.

What to Watch Next

1. Tesla, Meta and IBM after the close: the triple header lands after 4pm Eastern (roughly 1am PKT). Watch Meta’s advertising revenue and AI capex guidance, Tesla’s comments on the possible SpaceX merger and its robotics timeline, and IBM’s confirmation of its full-year outlook.
2. SpaceX follow-through: after the 8 per cent after-hours pop, watch whether the gains hold into the regular session and whether the rally spreads to space, AI infrastructure and semiconductor names.
3. Oil and the Hormuz premium: Brent’s five-month highs rest on a thin layer of mediation hope over a thick layer of shipping-attack reality. Any fresh incident in the Strait — or any credible progress toward a deal — moves the whole macro picture.
4. Treasury yields: the 10-year at 5.12 per cent is the equity market’s main headwind. Softer yields would validate the AI trade’s valuation; a push higher would revive the inflation fears that Barron’s flagged as lurking in the background.
5. Thursday’s session in Europe: French bonds and equities ahead of Saturday’s planned protests, with the troop deployment announcement already priced into part of the OAT move. Any escalation would push the France-Germany spread wider still.

Sources

• MarketWatch — “S&P 500 set to climb ahead of Meta and Tesla earnings”
• Reuters Morning Bid — “Musk mulls megacap”
• Barron’s — “Nasdaq and Dow Diverge as AI Optimism and Inflation Fears Pull Markets”
• Reuters — “Asian stocks climb as strong earnings buoy Wall Street”