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.
All three indexes lost 1% or more, major 3-digit losses all around. This is likely to continue until two major questions are answered: 1) How much is AI really going to end up costing? And 2) Who is going to be disrupted? As today’s expert said, “It’s a perspective on what may happen as opposed to what has happened.” As could be expected, with the flight to safety, gold surged 2.6%. The one bit of good news, and it's quite good, is that with Q4 in its final stretch, the S&P earnings are expected to have growth of 13.9%, way above the 8.9% January forecast and 74% have beaten expectations. Volume still remains well below the 20.62 average, coming in today at 18.39 billion.
DJ: 49,625.97 +230.81 NAS: 22,886.07
+203.34 S&P: 6,909.51
+47.62 2/20
DJ: 48,804.06 -821.91 NAS: 22,627.27
-258.80 S&P: 6,837.75
-71.76 2/23
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