[MARKET ANALYSIS] NQ slumps following disappointing GOOGL earnings; Shell announces its largest buyback

• European bourses are broadly firmer to start Thursday’s trade, with it being the busiest earnings day for Q3 in Europe. France’s CAC 40 (+0.7%) leads while the IBEX (-1.1%) lags. Outside of earnings (see more below), a modest boost across the equity space was seen following a Semafor report stating that the US administration is reportedly pursuing negotiations for a temporary peace agreement with Iran, although significant obstacles remain.
• Starting with earnings in South Korea for Samsung Electronics (-4.1%), its chip profit surged 15-fold Y/Y, driven by strong AI demand, but shares declined as investors were disappointed by the absence of new shareholder-return plans. To add, the chipmaker plans to increase FY26 CAPEX by more than 60% to KRW 84.4tln, after selling out of high-end chips for 2027.
• Moving to European earnings: STMicro -0.4%, Q3 metrics were mixed but its Q4 revenue guidance beat expectations (USD 4.15bln vs exp. USD 4.11bln); BBVA -5.8%, net income beat however, the metric missed for the Spanish region; ING -3.8%, metrics missed consensus across the board and plans 400 job cuts; Shell +3.1%, adj. profit beat and announces a USD 5bln share buyback programme; Lloyds -3.7%, PBT beat estimates but disappoints investors by not lifting guidance.
• US equity futures are mixed, with clear underperformance in the NQ following disappointing Alphabet (-10.2% pre-market earnings, in which EPS and revenue missed expectations, resulting in shares slumping pre-market. On the other hand, Microsoft (+3.6%) is higher pre-market after stronger-than-expected earnings and revenue, driven by robust Azure cloud growth and AI demand, alongside an upbeat cloud outlook and continued positive free cash flow.

Sessions where two mega-cap tech peers report in opposite directions have a well-worn pattern: the index-level move in the Nasdaq contract reflects the cap-weighted loser rather than the breadth of the tape, and the divergence between Alphabet and Microsoft here fits the recurring read-through trade where the market treats results as a referendum on whose AI spending is monetising fastest rather than on sector demand as a whole. The Alphabet selloff on an EPS and revenue miss is of the type that historically spills into the wider advertising and cloud complex via the peer set, while Microsoft's gain on Azure strength tends to be treated as company-specific confirmation rather than a clean sector signal. The Samsung episode is the other tell: in this cycle, large capex increases have repeatedly been punished when not accompanied by shareholder returns, a pattern that has separated the AI hardware names into those rewarded for capacity and those questioned on returns on it. On the European side, the session is a textbook busiest-earnings-day dispersion trade, where beats without guidance raises (Lloyds) and in-line prints with weak segments (BBVA, ING) are sold while cash returns (Shell's buyback) are bought, consistent with how energy majors have been treated as capital-return vehicles in recent reporting seasons. Follow-ons worth noting are the US cash open for whether the NQ underperformance broadens beyond the index heavyweights, and any consolidation of the reported Iran negotiation headlines, which in past episodes of this kind have faded intraday absent official confirmation.