Wall Street ends sharply lower amid AI displacement fears and revived tariff angst

Wall Street ends sharply lower amid AI displacement fears and revived tariff angst

By Stephen Culp and Shashwat Chauhan

Mon February 23, 2026 

It seems that the stock market was willing to brush off the 10% global tariffs Trump imposed Friday, defying the Supreme Court after it declared his tariff policy unconstitutional. But when he upped it to 15% on Saturday, that was a whole different story, not only because of all the added uncertainty and chaos that’s suddenly been thrown into the mix but because the new tariff breaks trade agreements that already in place, making us vulnerable to even more chaos in the global markets. Add to that the continuing angst over the potential repercussions from AI and it was a formula for a perfect storm.  

Wall Street ends higher after Supreme Court rules against Trump tariffs

Wall Street ends higher after Supreme Court rules against Trump tariffs

By Noel Randewich and Shashwat Chauhan

Fri February 20, 2026 6:52 AM

It’s been no secret that Wall Street and U.S. industry in general have not been happy with the tariffs which have created so much uncertainty and chaos in the markets for the past year. So when the Supremes struck down the tariffs, the indexes all greeted this happily with triple digit gains in both the Dow and Nasdaq. Not that the uncertainty has been completely removed as was evidenced by the charts showing a whole lot of rollercoaster throughout the day.  

Wall Street ends down as Nvidia slides and private equity stocks sink

Wall Street ends down as Nvidia slides and private equity stocks sink

By Noel Randewich

Thu February 19, 2026 5:35 AM

The AI vs software developers tug-of-war resurfaced today when private equity firm (the firms that finance these smaller companies) Blue Owl Capital sold $1.4B in assets citing repeated concerns about software firms to be hurt by AI. Other private equity firms followed the leader and did same. There was a rush out of everything, though following recent patterns, there was a huge dip in the middle of the day followed by a recovery of sorts. Everything looked much worse earlier with the Dow down over 450 by 1 pm (recovering about half of that in the final hour), and the Nasdaq down over 150 by 3 pm, again recovering about half in the final hour.  

US stocks follow European shares higher; geopolitical jitters boost oil, gold

US stocks follow European shares higher; geopolitical jitters boost oil, gold

By Stephen Culp

Wed February 18, 2026 9:00 PM

The pattern continues. After opening with all three indexes zooming way up, the Dow up over 350 points, then at 1:30 everything went crashing down to lose all gains by 3:30 but did recoup some of them in that final half hour. The trigger was the usual mix of competing interests of rate cuts vs inflation control. Dampening sentiment was also the disappointing Ukraine peace talks and Iran restricting access to the Strait of Hormuz creating potential supply problems. Christine Lagarde’s leaving her post at the ECB was an additional cause for concern. Fed minutes showed a strong consensus to hold rates steady but a split over the timing of the next cut. Per the CBOE, volume was 17.1 billion, still below the 20 billion average.

DJ: 49,533.19  +32.26         NAS: 22,578.38  +31.71         S&P: 6,843.22  +7.05             2/17

DJ: 49,662.66  +129.47       NAS: 22,753.64  +175.25       S&P: 6,881.32  +38.10           2/18

Wed 2-18-26 5:04 pm US stocks follow European shares higher; geopolitical jitters boost oil, gold | Reuters

Equities close with slight gains as tech shares recover

Equities close with slight gains as tech shares recover

By Chuck Mikolajczak and Purvi Agarwal

Tue February 17, 2026 6:24 AM

It was another extremely volatile day on the indexes with all three bouncing back and forth several times between deep red and modest black, the Dow losing some 330 points and the Nasdaq down some 300 in the morning. But all three eventually worked their way through all the nerves to close modestly in the black. The events were summed up by today’s expert, “There’s a lot of different [competing] trends going on in terms of where investors want to put money right now and you see that in this market where you just see spikes up and spikes down, on maybe not a daily basis, but on a regular basis.”  

S&P 500 ends up slightly as tech dips, inflation cools

S&P 500 ends up slightly as tech dips, inflation cools

By Sinéad Carew and Twesha Dikshit

Fri February 13, 2026 6:48 AM  

Wednesday’s strong jobs report brought the market down due to pessimism over rate cuts. Today’s CPI data showed prices increasing less than expected with inflation at least holding and perhaps even finally seeing some daylight in terms of tariff impact. This sparked renewed optimism that there might be a rate cut, prompting the oddsmakers to slightly push the June cut from 48.9% to 52.3%. Everything was going great until about 1 pm, the Dow being up some 300 points, but then all three indexes began a steady decline which led to the loss of most gains with all indexes closing modestly with the Nasdaq a little in red, the others a little in the black.  

Wall Street sinks as tech rout deepens on AI angst

Wall Street sinks as tech rout deepens on AI angst

By Sinéad Carew and Twesha Dikshit

Thu February 12, 2026 5:47 AM  

AI jitters returned to very high gear today with another huge rout that was triggered by a less than stellar Q4 update from Cisco Systems. This dent in the AI halo quickly infected the entire market and continued to aggravate nerves about the enormous AI spending going on, reported to be a whopping $650 billion by Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft alone. The huge selloff was also attributed to a continuation of yesterday’s trigger of how these huge capital expenses can possibly be recouped into profits. Tomorrow’s CPI will give a clearer picture on inflation. But the bottom line according to today’s expert, “We see this as a ‘prove it' year for AI. We need to start seeing some return on investments.” At 22.45 billion, volume was very brisk and well above the 4-week average of 20.78 billion. 

DJ: 50,121.40  -66.74         NAS: 23,066.47  -36.01         S&P: 6,941.47  -0.34               2/11

DJ: 49,451.98  -669.42       NAS: 22,597.15  -469.32       S&P: 6,832.76  -108.71           2/12

Thu 2-12-26 5:01 pm Wall Street sinks as tech rout deepens on AI angst | Reuters