Wall Street Ends October Higher as Nasdaq Sets the Pace

At the closing bell Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added about 41 points (0.09%) to 47,563, the S&P 500 rose roughly 18 (0.26%) to 6,840, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 144 (0.61%) to 23,725, while the Russell 2000 advanced 0.55% to 246.20. In commodities, December crude traded near $60.90 (up 0.54%) and December gold hovered around $4,009 (down 0.17%).

At the company level, the coming Palantir print looms large after a quarter marked by expanding AIP use cases, new tie-ups with Snowflake and Nvidia, and continued inroads with government buyers—from the UK Armed Forces to a $385 million VA award and a defense deal in Poland, according to a Wedbush research note.

Wedbush’s Daniel Ives framed the stakes starkly: “We continue to believe Palantir has the potential to be a trillion-dollar market cap company in the next few years as the AI Revolution takes hold and AI production continues to ramp up. We maintain our OUTPERFORM rating and $200 price target with the company remaining on the Ives AI 30 list.” The note also argues that street revenue forecasts are “beatable” as commercial demand broadens.

The broader mega-cap backdrop remains constructive. Apple guided to 10%–12% December-quarter revenue growth and 47%–48% gross margins as services hit a record $28.8B, even as tariffs and supply tightness linger. Amazon spotlighted AWS growth and structurally higher operating margins; Alphabet crossed the $100B quarterly revenue mark amid rising AI CapEx; Microsoft delivered double-digit growth while cautioning on Azure capacity; and Meta posted robust top-line gains alongside faster expense growth. Each thread reinforces a common narrative: AI is supporting revenue and margin resilience while forcing capital allocation trade-offs across the group.

In ETFs, Brian Potts, a lawyer at Husch Blackwell, sketched a different kind of core exposure with DEMZ, which screens S&P 500 constituents on multi-cycle donation data to Democrats and seeks to hew to sector weights. “We are a retirement asset for Democrats. So we are an SPY or a VOO alternative…[the fund] is designed to track the market as closely as possible using only the companies who have contributed more to Democrats,” he told AInvest. He also described the fund succinctly as “the S&P without the GOP.” While questions persist about tech concentration, Potts said any tilt reflects market moves between rebalances and emphasized the strategy’s rules-based design. Potts created the Goods Unite Us website to help anyone, investors, voters, Democrats, Republicans, track where companies are sending their political donations.

For investors, the near-term setup ties together earnings catalysts and factor exposures. If AI spending and commercial adoption keep outpacing capacity constraints, leaders could extend their advantage; otherwise, the market may refocus on balance-sheet discipline and policy-sensitive costs such as tariffs. Either way, the coming Palantir update and the continued evolution of values-based core ETFs will test whether 2025’s AI narrative still has room to run—or merely needs a new chapter.