The moral of the story: High expectations are hard to beat [Video]

Meta fell 15% in the afterhours trading despite earnings beat as investors didn’t like the weaker-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter and even less the news that the company will be spending more money to improve its AI capabilities. Tesla jumped 12% regardless of revenue miss. Google, Microsoft and Intel are due to report today.

So far, we observe that the high expectations have played tricks on stock valuations and the first set of earnings reactions warn that even strong results from Big Tech may not suffice to send their stock prices higher – if we start seeing growth expectations level out. (I am looking at you Microsoft and Nvidia.)

Zooming out, the stumbling giant Meta is weighing on the mood this morning. US futures are down and the technology-heavy Nasdaq is leading losses with more than 1% fall at the time of writing.

The macroeconomic landscape is complex, with investors balancing between robust GDP growth and high earnings expectations for the Big Tech companies, all while considering the fading expectations for a Federal Reserve's (Fed) rate cut. All eyes on US Q1 GDP today.

In the FX, the USDJPY continues its advance above 155 defying expectation of a direct FX intervention in the next few hours.