Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on the stories moving money right now.
Caterpillar delivered its biggest earnings beat in five years, and the engine behind it wasn't construction or mining — it was data centers. Surging demand for the infrastructure powering artificial intelligence lifted revenue to record levels, sending the stock sharply higher and reminding the market that the AI buildout runs on heavy iron.
Pfizer meantime topped quarterly estimates and raised the low end of its full-year revenue guidance, but the real story is the shift underneath the numbers. The company slashed its full-year outlook for Covid products to four billion dollars, down from roughly five billion, signaling that the post-pandemic revenue base is fading and non-Covid drugs are now carrying the weight.
And McDonald's beat earnings estimates, but the headline hides a harder truth — the stock is down more than eleven percent this year, cutting its market cap to roughly one hundred ninety-one billion dollars. The chain also named a new head of its U.S. business, a move management framed as an effort to accelerate domestic growth at a moment when the consumer is clearly watching every dollar.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
