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Market indices this week, after starting out sluggish, have put together solid growth from last week’s heady levels. Another modestly strong day for three of the four indices — the Dow +0.13%, the Nasdaq +0.24% and the S&P 500 (having surpassed the intraday record level of 5000) closed +0.057%, to just a hair beneath that psychologically pleasing record high — were no match for the small-cap Russell 2000, which gained +1.37% today. That said, the Russell is still in the red year to date, which the others are at least +2.6% in the green (the Nasdaq is already up nearly +7%).

We saw some real blowout trading days today, as well, including Arm Holdings (ARM), which shot up +47.9% on huge volume. This is following yesterday afternoon’s knockout positive surprise earnings report. To a lesser extent, Ralph Lauren (RL) beat estimates and gained +17% on the day. These stocks were balanced out by lackluster performances at PayPal (PYPL), down -11% today, among others.

However, after-market activity is quite a different story, thanks to several worse-than-expected results from a slew of companies representing different aspects of Big Tech. For instance, Pinterest (PINS) shares are down -15% on a big miss for the company’s bottom line, with earnings of 29 cents per share well off the 51-cent pace analysts had been expecting. Revenues also came in light, at $981.3 million compared to the $988.6 million consensus. Revenue guidance for next quarter takes the midpoint lower than the $704 million for the Zacks numbers. This stock is now trading in the negative year to date; Pinterest had been up +64.6% from one year ago.

Expedia (EXPE) put up similar results after today’s closing bell, posting earnings of 92 cents per share from the anticipated $1.67, though much of this was in regard to one-time costs in the quarter. Revenues came in slightly ahead of expectations to $2.89 billion in the quarter. But Peter Kern, company CEO since 2020, will be stepping down from the company and replaced by Ariane Gorin, who is currently President of Expedia for Business. Shares of Expedia are down -13% in late-market trading on this news.

FinTech growth company Afirm (AFRM), of the “buy now, pay later” system, swung to a big loss of -54 cents per share from and expected gain of +8 cents in its fiscal Q2 report out after today’s close. Revenues, however, came in decidedly ahead of consensus, $540 million versus $522 million expected. Guidance for Q3 revenue was also higher, now expecting $540 million from the prior Zacks consensus of $486 million. Shares are down -16% at this hour, but the stock had cranked up +193% from a year ago. This also marks the eighth earnings miss for the company since its 2021 IPO.

Take-Two Interactive (TTWO), the videogame maker perhaps best known for Grand Theft Auto, performed the best of this bunch in late trading. It missed its bottom line by a penny to 71 cents per share on $1.34 billion which was exactly in-line with estimates. However, next-quarter guidance is abysmal: a projected 5 cents per share is way beneath the 94 cents per share in the Zacks consensus, on $1.29 billion in expected revenue, well below the $1.52 billion analysts had been looking for. A weaker release schedule in Q2 and soft sales of NBA 2K24 were cited for the miss.

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