While US-Iran developments might still be the biggest risk to market sentiment, it isn’t the only game in town this week. As we look to round off April trading, key earnings releases are also part of the picture alongside potential month-end shenanigans. On the former, it is going to be a massive day up ahead in Wall Street.

That as we see some very big names lined up on the agenda. In particular, four of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ will be reporting today after the close. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are all slated to deliver their latest earnings snapshot before Apple rounds things off tomorrow.

Investors will be heavily watching and scrutinising to see if the billions in capital expenditure poured into AI will translate into more meaningful revenue growth. If not, there might be a negative response especially if capex guidance is revised higher for the quarter ahead while revenue numbers stall.

Tech shares have seen a wicked rebound in the past month with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq reaching fresh record highs last week. And that is despite the pressure and negative drag from tensions in the Middle East towards the global economy.

So, today is pretty much “judgement day” if you want to call it that. Can the earnings releases deliver and vindicate the bullish rebound in markets over the past few weeks? Or is this going to be where the cookie crumbles?

Zooming in specifically, here is what to watch for each of the big four names today:

• Alphabet: Google Cloud performance and any word on Gemini impacting search margins
• Amazon: The usual i.e. AWS performance and how it compares in the battle against Azure
• Meta: Ad revenue and how AI expenditure is translating to further gains in this space
• Microsoft: Azure performance and Copilot/AI showing (is it slowing as it seems?)

Besides that, look out for any word on capex guidance and we will have to take that in together with the numbers story from the key metrics above.