US tech stocks send Nasdaq to hit record high, as Alphabet beats forecasts

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rises 0.8 percent as investors bet on strong earnings from Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.

US tech stocks have catapulted the Nasdaq to a record high as investors bet on strong earnings from corporate heavyweights.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.8 percent on Tuesday, as Google’s parent company Alphabet reported forecast-beating earnings for the third quarter.

Alphabet’s revenue jumped 15 percent to $88.3bn during the July-September period, while profit surged 34 percent to $26.3 bn.

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the company was experiencing “extraordinary” momentum due to the strong performance of its search and cloud businesses as well as its focus on innovation, including artificial intelligence.

“Our commitment to innovation, as well as our long-term focus and investment in AI, are paying off and driving success for the company and for our customers,” Pichai said on an earnings call.

“We are uniquely positioned to lead in the era of AI because of our differentiated full-stack approach to AI innovation, and we’re now seeing this operate at scale.”

Alphabet’s share price rose nearly 6 percent in after-hours trading.

The tech giant’s strong performance comes ahead of hotly-anticipated earnings results this week from Apple, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Amazon, all of which registered stock price gains on Tuesday.

Shares of Meta Platforms, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple rose 2.62 percent, 1.3 percent, 1.26 percent and 0.12 percent, respectively.

Tesla, another of the “Magnificent Seven” stocks that account for more than one-third of the market, dropped 1.14 percent, after soaring 22 percent last week following a forecasting-beating profit in the third quarter.

The broader market saw only a modest rise, with the benchmark S&P 500 inching up 0.2 percent.

The strong performance of tech giants was offset by slumps by corporate giants including Ford and JetBlue Airways, which saw their stock price sink 8.4 percent and 17.1 percent, respectively.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies