Tesla, IBM and Meta Platforms helped lead most U.S. stocks higher on Thursday following a rush of profit reports from some of the country’s most influential companies. The S&P 500 rose 0.5%, as four out of every five stocks in the index climbed.

Wall Street's main indexes rose on Thursday, driven by post-earnings advances in Meta and Tesla, although Microsoft's weak cloud forecast and downbeat results from Cigna dampened investor enthusiasm. Microsoft MSFT.O dropped 4.7% after forecasting disappointing growth in its cloud computing business.

Stocks rose Tuesday, led by tech. AI fears loom as Meta, Microsoft report earnings. Tesla faces policy risks. Fed decision, major earnings, and government cuts ahead.

"Investing 'very heavily' in capital expenditure and infrastructure is going to be a strategic advantage over time," Mark Zuckerberg said.

The tech giants on Wednesday talked up their AI strategies and said they are sticking with ambitious investments in the technology despite the investor panic this week over the ri