Friday was one of those days that makes stock watching genuinely interesting. Intel popped 23.6%. Charter Communications collapsed 25.5%. Both are large American companies with decades of history. One just printed a quarter that made investors rethink a turnaround story they'd mostly given up on. The other confirmed fears that its core business is eroding faster than anyone modeled. And sandwiched between all of it: the S&P 500 sitting at 7,165 — basically all-time highs — with the biggest earnings week of 2026 kicking off Monday morning.

Intel Reminded Everyone It's Still Here

Intel surged to $82.54 Friday after Q1 2026 results came in ahead of Wall Street estimates. That beat matters more than it normally would, because this is a company that lost $18.7 billion in 2023 alone and has spent four years trying to stay relevant in a chip landscape that AMD and NVIDIA have been slowly taking over. When a company in full turnaround mode actually delivers, the market doesn't respond with a polite nod. It gaps.

Worth being honest about the valuation, though. Our site shows Intel with a forward P/E — what investors pay today per dollar of next year's expected earnings — well above 100x. That's not a cheap stock by any conventional measure. What the market is buying is the direction of travel, not the current multiple. Tech investor Dan Niles went on CNBC Friday and called the rally "only the beginning." Maybe. But at those valuations, the margin for disappointing next quarter is pretty thin.

AMD rode the same wave, gaining 13.9% — a mix of relief rally and genuine chip sector optimism. AMD's underlying story is actually cleaner on the numbers: a forward P/E of 48.6x on our site with 34% trailing revenue growth. Still a premium, but backed by real momentum. If you want to see how the two stack up on the metrics, the INTC vs. AMD comparison on this site puts it side by side.

Cable's Rough Friday

While chips were flying, cable was getting wrecked. Charter's 25.5% drop was one of the steepest single-session falls for a major S&P 500 component this year. Subscriber losses came in worse than estimates — not slightly worse, materially worse. Cord-cutting has been a slow-burn story for years, but Friday made it clear the pace is accelerating, not plateauing.

Comcast fell nearly 13% in sympathy. The long-standing argument for Comcast has been that its broadband internet business would more than offset TV subscriber losses over time. When a quarter disappoints simultaneously on subscribers and revenue, that thesis gets stress-tested in real time. Our site has Comcast at a forward P/E of 8.3x with a PEG ratio of 0.60 — the PEG ratio is a quick shorthand: under 1.0 means you're technically paying less per share of earnings than the company's growth rate justifies. The uncomfortable caveat is that cheap can stay cheap, or get cheaper, when the underlying business model is under structural pressure. That's the debate that hasn't been settled for cable.

The AI Jobs Paradox

While markets were moving, Meta and Microsoft disclosed a combined 20,000 job cuts this week. The stated reason in both cases: AI is taking over those functions. These are the same two companies currently spending tens of billions on AI infrastructure and data center buildouts. The math isn't subtle — cut human headcount, redeploy capital toward AI compute, and hope the resulting margin improvement shows up before the market starts asking hard questions about when AI actually generates meaningful new revenue.

Michael Burry — the investor from The Big Short who famously shorted the 2008 housing market — quietly added a new Microsoft position this week, apparently betting that the cost-cutting phase improves margins ahead of any full AI monetization. On our site, Microsoft sits at a forward P/E of 23x with 16.7% revenue growth and nearly 45% analyst upside from consensus price targets. Meta tells a similar story: 22.2x forward P/E, 23.8% revenue growth, 36% analyst upside. Both report next week. Both are priced for things to go well.

What Monday Brings

The market is sitting at all-time highs going into a week where every major Mag 7 name except Apple reports earnings. The Fed announces its rate decision Wednesday — no cut is expected, but Jerome Powell's tone on inflation will be watched carefully given that oil is back near $95 and the Iran situation remains genuinely unresolved. Iran's foreign minister said Friday that no meeting with U.S. negotiators is planned in Pakistan, which had been billed as the weekend's key diplomatic moment. Markets have largely shrugged off the geopolitics since the ceasefire rally; the question is how long that patience lasts if the talks stall.

If Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon all deliver strong guidance next week, the rally probably continues and the record-high narrative gets validated. If even two or three disappoint on AI revenue or forward outlook, the market has some explaining to do about current valuations. That's not pessimism — it's just what it means to buy at all-time highs going into the biggest earnings week of the year. The results are coming either way.

Sources: CNBC Markets — April 24, 2026 close data · CNBC: Stocks making the biggest moves — Intel, AMD, Charter · CNBC: Friday's Intel rally is only the beginning, Dan Niles · CNBC: Mag 7 earnings, Fed meeting — what's ahead for April 27 · CNBC: 20,000 job cuts at Meta, Microsoft raise AI labor concerns · CNBC: Michael Burry adds a new Microsoft bet, doubles down on software · Stock Analysis: Intel Income Statement · Stock Analysis: Charter Communications Forecast · Market data as of April 24, 2026 close. Metric data sourced from etf-metrics.com. This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice.