US stocks rally during cash session, futures down after market as Microsoft and Alphabet earnings disappoint.

US equities markets had another strong session as a flurry of weaker than expected housing and consumer confidence figures kept the Fed pivot dream alive. Growth and tech stocks outperformed with all major US indices finishing well in the green ahead of major earnings releases after the bell.

The big movers after hours are Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOG) after both the tech giants disappointed investors with misses on Q3 earnings and weak forward guidance. Both MSFT and GOOG tumbled almost 7% in the after-market, dragging US index futures down with them.

With equities up on Fed pivot hopes and US treasuries being aggressively bid , the 10 year T-Note yield dropped 15bp (Yield moves inversely to price) , unsurprisingly the US dollar took a break from it’s bull run and pulled back significantly against it’s peers, the US dollar index hitting 3 week lows, breaking back below 110.

The Yen strengthened against the USD, no doubt to the delight of the BoJ and MoF after their recent and costly interventions,  with USDJPY falling sub 148.00 and managing to hold there for now.

Another notable move was in Cryptos, with both BTC and ETH perfoming strongly after a long period of price stagnation. BTCUSD retook the 20k USD per token level after spending 3 weeks meandering around in the 19,000’s

More big earning to come out of the US today, pre and post market, with notables being another tech giant in Meta Platforms (META), and blue chips in McDonalds (MCD) and Boeing (BA).

In Economic announcements, Australian CPI will be released at 11:30am local time , and later in the day a closely watched Bank of Canada rate decision, where a 75bp hike is expected.