Stocks of the Week
Hand-picked stock analysis every week. What moved, why it matters, and what we think.
Educational purposes only. Not financial advice.
A tech giant surging 15% after Azure's best performance in four years and a massive earnings beat.
Why It Moved
Microsoft surged a whopping 15% because of its outstanding revenue on Azure, which surged 43%, its best performance in 4 years. Microsoft also beat its quarterly earnings top and bottom wall street expectations, rising 31%. Microsoft also recorded 41 billion dollars in capital expenditures, reassuring investors that massive AI data center investments will not crush its free cash flow.
Bullish Case
Microsoft's heavy AI spending heavily translated into profit, reassuring investors of its value. The company also has tons of cash flow, which leads to more share buybacks, and continuous asset acquisitions.
Bearish Case
Global regulators are constantly monitoring Microsoft's market power. Antitrust investigations into cloud licensing, AI partnerships (like OpenAI), and acquisitions could limit future expansion.
Written by Reavis Ho
An AI-powered software leader riding investor optimism ahead of its upcoming earnings report.
Why It Moved
Palantir performed well this week because investors remain optimistic ahead of its upcoming earnings report. Demand for artificial intelligence software, along with continued government contract wins and expanding commercial business, has boosted confidence in the company's growth prospects.
Bullish Case
Palantir is a leader in AI-powered software for government and commercial customers. The company continues to grow revenue while improving profitability, and its expanding commercial AI platform could support strong long-term growth.
Bearish Case
Despite its strong performance, Palantir's stock trades at a very high valuation. If the company reports weaker-than-expected earnings or slows its growth outlook, the share price could decline sharply.
Written by Ian Lim
A quantum computing upswing as investors bet on the technology's future ahead of earnings.
Why It Moved
Rigetti's stock went up this week because more investors are getting excited about quantum computing. People are also looking forward to the company's upcoming earnings report and hoping it will show good progress.
Bullish Case
Rigetti is working on quantum computers, which could be a big part of the future. If the company keeps improving its technology and gets more customers, the stock could continue to grow over time.
Bearish Case
Rigetti is still losing money and doesn't make a lot of revenue yet. Since quantum computing is still new, it could take years before the company becomes consistently profitable. If it doesn't meet investors' expectations, the stock could drop.
Written by Samuel Ro
A cloud and retail juggernaut jumping 12% after a strong second-quarter earnings beat.
Why It Moved
Amazon stock increased by 12% on Friday after exceeding expectations on their second quarter earnings report. AWS remains the leading cloud service across the world ahead of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. The strong report has investors hoping it would continue to grow.
Bullish Case
AWS continues to be the leader in cloud services as the AI industry becomes more and more popular in daily life. Since the company has multiple ways of generating revenue, it is extremely difficult for the entire company to crash since it has diversified earnings across different sectors.
Bearish Case
If AMZN wants to remain the leader in the AI race, they will have to spend significant chunks of money to sustain this. With the likes of GOOGL and MSFT spending billions of dollars, AMZN will have to match that. Also, with their large retail business and growing concerns for tariffs, this could be a major concern for the company moving forward.
Written by Terry Hu