Stocks sink amid AI and tariff fears
Trump’s 15% global tariff rate and an independent research piece detailing a potential AI dystopian scenario spooked investors.
The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all sank as stocks slumped amid AI anxiety and tariff turmoil after President Trump announced a 15% global tariff rate on Saturday.
On the AI front, a research piece published by Citrini Research and Lotus Technology Management managing partner Alap Shah titled “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” explored a hypothetical dystopian scenario in a world where there’s an aggressive AI build-out and adoption of AI agents. The report hit software stocks and payment stocks particularly hard, with the financial sector faring the worst today. Consumer staples and healthcare were the best performers as investors rotated into defensive stocks.
Surprisingly strong labor market data from earlier this month has the Federal Reserve’s standout doves more willing to stand down from advocating for additional rate cuts. Prediction markets indicate that the Federal Reserve is seen as a near lock to keep its policy rate unchanged at its March meeting. (Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)
Bitcoin market pain intensified as ETF outflows continued.
Stocks that moved higher:
PayPal jumped on a report of unsolicited takeover interest.
Arcellx skyrocketed on news that Gilead will buy the cancer therapy developer for up to $7.8 billion.
Chinese EV maker Nio climbed following news that the company provided a million battery swaps in China in less than a week.
Domino’s rose after Q4 revenue beat estimates by 1% and same-store sales grew 3.7% in the US.
Bitdeer rose as it sold its entire stash of bitcoin to help fund its pivot to a data center company.
Sandisk ticked higher, shaking off a slump that hit the shares last week after it priced a secondary offering of almost 6 million shares.
Stocks that moved lower:
Software stocks Datadog, Asana, CrowdStrike, AppLovin, Workday, DocuSign, Adobe, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Palantir and payment stocks Synchrony Financial, American Express, Capital One, Mastercard, and Visa fell due to Citrini Research’s dystopian AI analysis.
Novo Nordisk plummeted after reporting that its experimental obesity drug fell short of Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide in a head-to-head trial.
IBM tumbled after Anthropic touted Claude Code’s ability to modernize old code.
VF Corp. sank after JPMorgan downgraded the stock to “underweight” with a new price target of $18.
Strategy dropped after announcing a share sale to fund its 100th bitcoin purchase.
