Final Tally: Microsoft Found Guilty of Cloud Growth Crimes… Trump Drops a Fed Teaser

Bitcoin: There's absolutely no way anyone could be having it worse than me right now…

Microsoft: You wanna bet?

There aren’t many stocks that can single-handedly grab the entire market by the ankles and drag it straight into the sewer. But today, one very large, very respected member of the Mag 7 reminded everyone just how much gravitational pull it still has.

I’m not even gonna try to put lipstick on this pig. Microsoft got absolutely obliterated… down 12%, marking its worst day since March 2020 (back when we were all hoarding Germ X bottles instead of gold and silver). 

So how did one of the biggest companies in the world lose roughly $500 billion in market cap in the blink of an eye?

Not because the business is broken. Not because Windows stopped working. Or because Satya Nadella was caught in some sort of scandal with his secretary (which would be way more entertaining).

It was worse. Their earnings report crime was that Cloud growth slowed. And Wall Street does not forgive when trillion-dollar companies stop growing like weeds on Miracle-Gro.

Azure growth decelerated in Microsoft’s fiscal second quarter, and management followed that up by issuing soft operating margin guidance for next quarter. Translation: “Yeah, we’re still spending an ungodly amount of money on AI infrastructure… and it’s going to hurt for a bit.”

And thus the fire alarm was pushed in and pulled down…

The Nasdaq slid 1.3%, the S&P 500 fell 0.5%, and suddenly every portfolio with a heavy tech tilt started feeling like it left the stove on at home. As usual, the Dow did absolutely nothing (+.06%).

Luckily for Microsoft, they weren’t the only one that got caught swimming naked in the AI ocean.

ServiceNow also dropped 12%... after beating earnings and revenue.  Salesforce fell 7%. And Oracle slid another 4% (which now puts Larry’s pride and joy down 50% since it hit an ATH last year).

After all that AI spending, “good but not incredible” is illegal. Blowout numbers win. Everything else bleeds. And unfortunately for all of us, our portfolios were the ones bleeding.

Meta was the lone tech adult in the room, jumping about 10% after issuing a surprising revenue outlook. Of course, the Zuckster reminded everyone he plans to spend up to $135 billion on data centers this year. So yes, AI spending is alive and well… it’s just starting to scare people instead of excite them.

Meanwhile, while Microsoft was busy taking bullets in the street, Bitcoin decided it wasn’t done embarrassing its holders for the week.

Everyone’s favorite crypto gospel dropped more than 5%, tagging $84,000, its lowest since early December. That leaves Bitcoin down about 3% on the year and nearly 20% over the past 12 months… not exactly the sermon the “hedge against everything” crowd wanted (if you’ve been waiting to whisper BTFD, congrats… here’s your cue).

And before the gold bugs get too comfortable on their moral high ground, they got clipped too. After ripping to a fresh record near $5,600, gold slid more than 4% as traders took profits and remembered gains are meant to be taken at some point.

And because no Final Tally edition is complete without Donnie Politics grabbing the mic…

Trump announced that he’ll be announcing his pick for the next Fed chair next week. JPow’s term expires in May and prediction markets are losing their f***ing minds over who they think the next pick is. Jerome, we had a good run, we’re gonna miss you. Also, much appreciated for turning what use to be $1.00 into $.60 in record time. What a national hero.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

Market Gossip

>Microsoft gained $7.6B from OpenAI last quarter (TechCrunch): That “complicated relationship” magically cleared up once Sundar saw the check hit.

>Musk admits no Optimus robots are doing ‘useful work’ at Tesla — after claiming otherwise (Electrek): Elon’s entire marketing strategy comes down to: Make wild end-of-year claim, fail to deliver, reframe as “early stages,” repeat indefinitely.

>China’s Metals Mania Sends Copper Soaring Past $14,500 a Ton (Bloomberg): Crypto basement dwellers really convinced themselves that PEPE and Titcoin were more valuable than precious metals.

>Oracle’s Value Is Cut In Half From 2025 Peak as AI Caution Rises (Yahoo Finance): When you get rained on by your own cloud…

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Microsoft, Meta, Tesla, and Bitcoin as mentioned in the article.