U.S. stocks climbed Wednesday after a volatile stretch for AI shares. Semiconductors grabbed the lead at the open, buyers held it through the close, and megacap earnings took over once the bell rang.

$SPY rose 0.5%, $DIA gained 0.6%, $QQQ climbed 1.1%, and $IWM added 0.3%. Seven of 11 sectors finished green. Technology led at +1.7%, powered by $AMD and $NVDA, while Communication Services lagged at -1.1%. Defensives struggled, with Procter & Gamble and Eli Lilly among the blue-chip drags.

Reuters reported that SpaceX’s earnings and Super Micro’s preliminary sales forecast revived enthusiasm for AI-linked stocks.

After hours, Meta shrugged off a $9.9B legal charge with record revenue, while Tesla produced surprise cash flow by spending billions less than expected. IBM’s delayed deals finally arrived, Lam Research posted records and sold off anyway, and PHP2Shell showed how quickly AI can turn from bug hunter to attack tool.

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Meta reported record third-quarter revenue Wednesday as its advertising machine shrugged off an expensive trip to the courthouse. The firm also announced a 2-1 stock split to turn Class A shares to non voting Class C shares, helping CEO Zuck retain control while making it easier to fundraise for AI spending in 2027.

The RIP: $META jumped 5.8% after hours. Revenue reached $64.6B, above the $63.37B estimate, while adjusted earnings landed at $7.40 per share. 10 million people have set up Muse agent accounts in the U.S. and Canada, Zuck said, and he expects billions more to jump on the tech.

The ugly number was a $9.9B legal charge tied to social-media lawsuits. It pushed net income down to $9.8B and helped send free cash flow to negative $2.1B, Meta’s first negative quarter as a public company. Apparently, a record ad quarter can make Wall Street forgive one massive legal bill. ⚖️

Advertising revenue rose to $63.1B, and Meta guided for $73B to $76B of fourth-quarter revenue. Meanwhile, the company lifted the bottom of its capital-spending range to $135B from $130B and created a new class of nonvoting shares to help fund its AI buildout. The ads are paying for the party. For now. 🤖

Tesla’s third-quarter report delivered a small headline beat and one very large surprise: The company generated cash when Wall Street expected it to burn billions. Musk also said on the call that SpaceX and Tesla were exploring a merger, helping push shares higher.

The RIP: $TSLA was up 3.8% after revenue totaled $28.05B, while adjusted earnings of $0.48 per share topped the $0.40 estimate.

Free cash flow reached $1.53B versus expectations for a $4.92B outflow. The trick was spending less. Capital expenditures came in at $4.73B, roughly $2.8B below estimates. Nothing brightens an earnings report like several billion dollars that never left the building. 💵

Revenue was essentially flat from last year, and vehicle deliveries slipped 2% to 486,532. Still, deliveries exceeded production by more than 22,000 vehicles, clearing inventory for a second straight quarter. Energy storage also helped offset the aging Model 3 and Model Y lineup. 🔋

The bullish reaction says traders liked the cash discipline. The catch is that lower AI and robotics spending cannot become the growth strategy forever.

IBM’s delayed second-quarter deals showed up in the third quarter, turning last quarter’s stumble into Wednesday night’s 7.1% rally.

The RIP: $IBM reported adjusted earnings of $2.95 per share versus $2.85 expected. Revenue reached $17.1B, topping the $16.82B estimate and rising from $16.33B last year.

Roughly two-thirds of the mainframe deals that slipped last quarter closed during the third quarter, according to IBM CFO Jim Kavanaugh. Software revenue rose 8% to $7.8B, while infrastructure revenue increased 4% to $3.71B. Consulting remained the sleepy segment, sitting roughly flat at $5.34B. Turns out “timing issue” sounds much better once the checks arrive. 🧾

IBM raised the bottom of its full-year software growth outlook to 7% from 6%. It also expects free cash flow to increase by more than $1B this year, improving its previous forecast for roughly $1B of growth. That extra word, “more,” did plenty of work Wednesday night. 💻

Super Micro gave the AI-server crowd exactly what it wanted Tuesday night: more sales, better margins, and numbers large enough to wake up the entire semiconductor complex.

The RIP: $SMCI surged 9.5% Wednesday on 2.2 times its recent volume. The company’s preliminary revenue forecast jumped to $18.5B to $19.5B, up from $14.5B to $15.5B.

That raised the midpoint by $4B. Super Micro also lifted its expected gross-margin range to 12% to 12.5% from 10.4% to 10.8%, crediting stronger AI-platform demand and a better product mix. Selling more servers is good. Keeping more money from each one is the part shareholders have been waiting for. 🖥️

The figures are still preliminary and unaudited. Full results arrive Nov. 3, when investors will learn whether the bigger orders also produced better cash conversion. Super Micro’s history has taught traders to read the footnotes twice. 🔍

Lam Research turned AI-fueled chip demand into record quarterly revenue, profit, and earnings. Traders celebrated by knocking the stock down 6.5%.

The RIP: $LRCX ( ▼ 1.0% ) sold off after revenue jumped 22% sequentially to $8.22B. Adjusted earnings rose 21% to $2.20 per share, and adjusted operating margin expanded to 40.2%.

The quarter itself was hard to dislike. Revenue rose 54% from last year, gross margin improved to 52.4%, and operating cash flow more than doubled sequentially to $3.50B. Lam did not merely clear the bar. It carried the bar into another room. 🧹

The problem was the price investors had already paid for perfection. Lam guided for December-quarter revenue of $8.60B, plus or minus $400M, with adjusted earnings of $2.33, plus or minus $0.15. More growth, just not enough to satisfy a stock that entered Wednesday with expectations bolted to the ceiling. 🏭

Stocktwits sentiment remained 79% bullish despite the drop. The market’s message was colder: Records are nice. Surprise us again.

$LRCX traders are debating whether the selloff outran the guidance. ->

CrowdStrike picked quite a day to expand its Nvidia partnership. Cybersecurity stocks were flying besides the news, after yet another AI discovered exploit hit the tape. According to an exclusive Wall Street Journal report, AI helped researchers discover PHP2Shell, a critical flaw affecting software that powers up to 70% of the world’s websites.

Hackers could use it to take control of unpatched servers, steal data, install software, or attack visitors. AI found a vulnerability humans had effectively abandoned as too difficult to exploit. Tech Crunch reported that websites around the world were down trying to fix the problem including NSA systems. In my use, the FRED Fed Reserve of St. Louis API for macro data was down, and I hope it’s not because of an ancient bug in PHP an LLM found.

The RIP: $CRWD ( ▲ 5.27% ) climbed 5.3% after CrowdStrike announced Falcon Guardian integrations with Nvidia’s OpenShell runtime and planned Sentry hardware controls. The real news was that the world needs cybersecurity more than ever in the AI age.

Now the same technology can help criminals study the patch and build an attack in a fraction of the usual time. The repair effort touched nearly 200 files and added more than 10,000 lines of code. PHP’s team rushed the patch out after news leaked one day early. That is not a software update. That is a starting gun. 🏁

CrowdStrike was not involved in finding or fixing PHP2Shell. But the emergency made its pitch brutally concrete: When AI can uncover and weaponize bugs at machine speed, defenders need controls running at machine speed, too. 🔐

BEARISH · HIGH ACTIVITY

Aevex sank after reports said the Navy halted purchases of its GARC drone boats after spending $136.8M, a nasty hit for a contractor that gets most of its revenue from the U.S. government.

BEARISH · NORMAL ACTIVITY

AT&T slid after revenue rose 5.3% to $32.32B but net income fell to $855M as a Mexico impairment, higher costs, and interest expense swallowed the top-line growth.

BULLISH · HIGH ACTIVITY

Rocket Lab rose after its spacecraft launched for Viasat’s $81M NASA communications program, which will test commercial relay services for future missions.

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