Meta $META Hits Record $64B Quarter: The AI Bet Is Paying Off

Let's call this week what it was: a tale of two earnings seasons. On one side, $META and SpaceX showed up with receipts. On the other, $NFLX and $GM reminded everyone that vibes alone don't move the needle. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 closed the week at 7,757, up 0.58% on Wednesday after a brief Friday stumble that sent the VIX spiking to nearly 20 before it quietly retreated to 16.68 by close Tuesday. Classic market behavior: panic, recover, pretend it never happened.

$META was the clear sentiment darling of the week. Record quarterly revenue of $64.2 billion, up 26% year-over-year, with Q4 guidance of $73-76 billion nudging above the $73.57 billion consensus. YouTube chatter was overwhelmingly bullish across multiple Bloomberg Podcasts episodes covering the print. The bear case worth noting: a $10 billion one-time legal charge crushed GAAP EPS to $3.57 versus an adjusted $7.40, and full-year expenses were hiked to $175-179 billion. Zuckerberg is also pushing through a new non-voting share class, which corporate governance hawks are quietly side-eyeing. Still, the revenue trajectory is hard to fade.

SpaceX was the other conversation-dominator, with $14.58 billion in Q3 revenue (versus $12.87 billion expected) and net income of $4.4 billion against an $1.8 billion estimate. Its AI unit, rebranded as Super Intelligence, generated $7.56 billion in revenue, surpassing Starlink connectivity for the first time. The Tesla-SpaceX merger speculation added fuel to an already blazing story, with $TSLA surging 7.4% on the news. Not bad for a week where the 10-year Treasury yield was sitting stubbornly at 5.15% making everything else look expensive.

On the loser's bracket: $GM dropped as much as 9.3% after earnings despite solid SUV and truck demand, with CEO Mary Barra citing intensifying external headwinds. CoreWeave had another rough one, falling 23.5% over the week as its debt concerns kept resurfacing. Ken Griffin of Citadel called AI infrastructure investments potentially bubble-like on a Bloomberg Podcast, drawing parallels to the telecom fiber overbuild of 2000. That comparison is going to live rent-free in NeoCloud investors' heads for a while.

The macro backdrop was pure chaos dressed in a business suit. Oil touched $110 a barrel on Strait of Hormuz fears, then tumbled on Trump's Russia sanctions waiver. The VIX spiked 21% in a single session on October 16th before calming down. Small business optimism hit a three-month low per JPMorgan's data, with only 30% of owners feeling good about the broader economy even as 60% felt fine about their own business. That gap is the most honest thing anyone said about the economy all week.

Apple's $AAPL Duo iPhone launched with a 14-week pre-order wait and JP Morgan already cutting shipment estimates to 8-9 million units this calendar year. Scarcity narrative is intact but supply constraints are a real ceiling on upside. The stock that deserves more attention going into next week is probably $VALE, quietly getting a bullish nod as a copper and inflation hedge in a world where energy prices are repricing everything.

If this week taught us anything, it's that the market still rewards companies that grow into their ambitions. Meta and SpaceX did. The question heading into next week is whether the 10-year yield at 5.15% decides to finally become the party crasher everyone's been dreading.