by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Microsoft shows the way.
The story went like this:
Wall Street gained on Wednesday and the S&P 500 and Dow industrials set fresh records, as Microsoft’s strong results boosted the indexes and marked the latest sign that U.S. corporate earnings season may be less dour than feared.
Microsoft shares surged 5.3% after the software giant posted sharp growth in its cloud computing business. The stock gave by far the biggest lift to the major indexes and the tech sector.
That’s how Reuters summarized the action on Wednesday afternoon to explain why the S&P 500 rose 0.4% to another record high, the NASDAQ 1.1%, and the Dow 0.2%. Many stories about this propitious event had a similar twist.