American exceptionalism is back! MSFT +8.9% & META +12.2%

Yesterday, after the market closed, Microsoft and Meta released their results. Microsoft’s share price jumped 8.9%, and Meta’s rose 12.2%!

This is the second quarter in a row in which their earnings confirm a second AI-driven bull wave.

Following Q1 2025 results (both Meta and Microsoft published them on April 30 after the market close), Meta outperformed the S&P 500 by 6.6 percentage points over two trading days, and Microsoft by 10.1 percentage points over its first two sessions – see Figure 1.

In total, from April 30 to July 30, Meta beat the S&P 500 by 12.4 percentage points, and Microsoft by 15.6 percentage points over the same period!

Table 1 and Table 2 show the details going back to the Q4 2022 earnings release.

From February 1, 2023 to July 30, 2025, Meta outperformed the S&P 500 by 355 percentage points (nominal return of +409% versus +54.5% for the S&P 500).

From January 24, 2023 to July 30, 2025, Microsoft outperformed the S&P 500 by 73 percentage points (nominal return of +131% versus +58.4% for the S&P 500).