CNBC Business News Update - Market Close: Stocks Higher To Start May, Apple Reports Light Services Division Results, Amazon Issues Soft Guidance 5/1/25

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

From Wall Street to Main Street, the latest on the markets and what it means for your money. Updated regularly on weekdays, featuring CNBC expert analysis and sound from top business newsmakers. Anchored by CNBC's Jessica Ettinger.

I'm Jessica Edinger CNBC. Wall Street opens Friday morning after a winning start to May trading. The Dow up 83 points. It was led higher by shares of Microsoft up 7% on strong quarterly results. The S&P 500 index up 35 points, a half percent. The Nasdaq up 264 points, one and a half percent in video shares. On Thursday, up 2.5%. Apple out with better than expected quarterly results after the closing bell Thursday. Shares ticked lower on missed revenue in its services division.

Investors are digesting how the CEO plans to handle tariffs. Amazon out with better than expected quarterly earnings, but less growth in its AWS cloud division than expected. Investors sent Amazon shares lower after hours. Airbnb with a disappointing outlook saying this current quarter is soft. Pretty much every major participant in the travel leisure industry has acknowledged softness in the U.S.

You know, going back to March with the airlines that were kind of the first ones out of the gate, then we've heard it from hotel companies, even Norwegian crews, and acknowledged it this week too. Vital Knowledge founder Adam Crisafulli on CNBC. Instacart with disappointing results, but a better outlook than expected. Roku, Drugmaker Amgen, each out with better than expected quarterly results. Amgen's working on a new weight loss pill that has lots of investors excited. Reddit knocked it out of the park in the quarter as new users flocked to the social media platform. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says tariffs are a tax and it wants

tariff exclusions to stave off a recession as it fights for small businesses. We were just getting inundated by small business requests for relief, people afraid for the very survival of their business. It's hard for them to hire lobbyists and lawyers and make the push on their own. U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Clark on CNBC. McDonald's same store sales saw their worst drop in five years in the last quarter. Some evidence that consumers are slowing down their spending. They had a launch of a value platform, the McValue, which is basically a buy one, get

one for a dollar. That actually hurt their check, but helped their traffic a bit, but it wasn't the real answer. Evercore ISI's David Palmer on CNBC. The future, he says, is brighter. McDonald's was suffering. People were talking about how much Big Macs were. They're really going to pivot back to that $5 tight combo meal. And then McWrap comes back, which is the most requested item.

All that's happening the next few months, which is really good news. Tariffs are meant to boost manufacturing in the US, but April's ISM manufacturing report shows American manufacturing actually contracted for the second month in a row in April. The alarming thing about demand this month is that new export orders came in at 43.

That's a huge alarm, and it means that either we're being boycotted or counter tariffs are stopping our international partners from placing orders with us. So this is an alarming report. We're headed in the wrong direction, and I'm not actually sure how this is going to fix itself outside of some clarity in the tariff environment.

ISM Business Committee Survey Chair, Tim Fiore on CNBC. General Motors out with a new forecast for the year. The company's trying to navigate tariffs, which it says will cost it up to $5 billion this year. CNBC asked the CEO about raising vehicle prices to cover those tariff costs. Right now, as we look going forward, we think the price and environment is going to be much where it is right now.

GM CEO Mary Barra on CNBC. On Friday's Watchlist, it's a jobs Friday. We get the big April employment report from the Labor Department. Earnings are coming from ExxonMobil and Chevron. Jessica Edinger, CNBC. Introducing CNBC Plus. Start Edinger, CNBC.