A basket of the firms they buy from \u2014 the memory makers, server builders, and data center landlords \u2014 rose an average of 11%. <\/p>\n
Even Nvidia (NVDA<\/a>) landed on the winning side. The chipmaker rose 2% and added roughly $100 billion in market value, about what Microsoft and Apple lost combined. <\/p>\n Start with the losers, because their problem is the whole story. <\/p>\n Alphabet knocked it out of the park<\/a> and beat on almost every line this week. Revenue grew 24%, and its cloud business grew 82%. The stock fell 8% anyway, shedding about $330 billion in market value. <\/p>\n The reason was cash. Capital spending doubled to nearly $45 billion and outran the cash the business brought in, pushing Alphabet’s free cash flow<\/a> below zero for the first time as a public company. Management then raised its spending plans again and declined to say how high they would go in 2027. <\/p>\n Tesla reached the same place<\/a> from the other direction. Revenue beat, earnings missed badly, and operating margin fell to 1.4% from 4.1% a year ago. The stock lost 18% and about $250 billion, its worst week since 2022. <\/p>\n Google spent too much. Tesla earned too little. The market handed both the same grade. <\/p>\n The other side of that trade got paid for the exact spending Alphabet got punished for. <\/p>\n Supermicro Computer (SMCI<\/a>), which builds AI servers, jumped 25% after disclosing more than $60 billion in new orders in a single quarter. <\/p>\n Digital Realty (DLR<\/a>), a data center landlord, rose nearly 15% on a record leasing backlog \u2014 and raised its own spending plans this week without being punished at all. The difference is that its build-out is already leased. <\/p>\n None of this moved the broader market. Roughly $880 billion left the Magnificent Seven while the rest of the S&P 500 gained about $165 billion, and because the losses were concentrated in a handful of giant names, the index finished the week close to flat. From the outside, nothing happened. Underneath, the money changed hands<\/a>. <\/p>\n The catch is that the winners are still climbing out of a hole. <\/p>\n The memory and storage names leading this week’s bounce spent the past month getting crushed, and chip stocks as a group remain nearly 20% below their June record even after clawing back to the closely watched 12,000 level on the PHLX Semiconductor Index (^SOX<\/a>). The rebound has been real but not yet convincing. <\/p>\n Next week, the same test runs four more times. Microsoft and Meta report on Wednesday, Amazon and Apple on Thursday, alongside a Federal Reserve decision in between. Three of the four carry the same capital-spending line that just cost Alphabet $340 billion, and all three come in already beaten down \u2014 Microsoft sits 29% below its high, Meta 25%, Amazon 16%. <\/p>\n Apple (AAPL<\/a>) is the exception. It has no giant AI build-out to defend, is running its best month in four years, and closed at a record just last week. <\/p>\n The market spent this week writing the grading rubric. The next report cards come due on Wednesday. <\/p>\n Jared Blikre is the global markets and data editor for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @SPYJared<\/a> or email him at jaredblikre@yahooinc.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/a> Yahoo Finance analysis of AlphaSpace data <\/p>\n
<\/a> The PHLX Semiconductor Index (^SOX) year to date. \u00b7 Yahoo Finance AlphaSpace <\/p>\n