S&P 500, Nasdaq close lower
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite ended Thursday’s session in the red.
The broad-based index fell 0.54% to 6,908.86, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 1.18% to settle at 22,878.38. The 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average inched up 17.05 points, or 0.03%, to 49,499.20.
— Sean Conlon
Don’t give up on the ‘Magnificent 7,’ says Washington Trust Wealth Management’s Michael Sheldon
While the “Magnificent Seven” has struggled recently, with all but Apple in the red year to date, investors should remain optimistic about their fundamental outlook moving forward, according to Michael Sheldon, senior portfolio manager at Washington Trust Wealth Management.
Sheldon noted that the group’s share of the S&P 500’s net income is only increasing. According to FactSet, they made up 26% of that last year and are projected to account for 27.8% and 28.7% this year and next, respectively.
“While they’re temporarily out of favor, I wouldn’t write them off just yet,” he said.
— Sean Conlon
Nvidia sees record numbers of retail trader buying
Nvidia H100 chips inside a server room at the Yotta Data Services Pvt. data center, in Navi Mumbai, India, March 14, 2024.
Dhiraj Singh | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Retail investors rushed into Nvidia on Thursday following the chipmaker’s latest earnings report, according to VandaTrack.
Mom-and-pop traders recorded their highest levels of net buying in the stock during the first 80 minutes of a trading day going back to at least 2012, according to analyst Viraj Patel. Retail is not behind the selling that led to a lackluster reaction to the blockbuster results, Patel said.
There’s a caveat: Patel said there’s strong selling in addition to buying in the chipmaker. That can help explain the stock’s rocky action in morning trading, he added.
″Flows have been two-way,” Patel wrote in a Thursday note. “Total retail turnover in [Nvidia] has been pretty epic too at the start of the session.” Read more.
— Alex Harring
Stocks making midday moves: Penn Entertainment, Paramount Skydance, Cars.com
Here are the biggest movers in midday trading:
- Penn Entertainment — The casino and gaming company jumped 13% after it delivered stronger-than-expected revenue for the fourth quarter. Penn’s top line came in at $1.81 billion, beating a FactSet estimate of $1.76 billion.
- Paramount Skydance — The media company popped nearly 10% on better-than-expected guidance for the first quarter and the full year. Paramount sees adjusted EBITDA of $900 for the first three months of 2026, topping a FactSet consensus of $744.1 million. For the year, it expects revenue of around $30 billion, just above analyst estimates.
- Cars.com — The online car seller fell 15% after it delivered an earnings miss for the fourth quarter report and weaker-than-expected full-year revenue guidance. The online automotive marketplace said revenue is under pressure due to changes in original equipment manufacturer advertising investments.
Read the full list here.
— Fred Imbert
The market should still see broad gains in 2026 despite recent volatility
Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange on Feb. 25, 2026.
NYSE
The recent moves in the market isn’t changing Wells Fargo Investment Institute’s bullish stance on equities.
“Underneath the surface of volatile headlines, equity markets continued to show signs of rotation and broadening out consistent with our expectations that economic growth will accelerate this year,” said Doug Beath the firm’s global equity strategist, in a Wednesday note.
Beath believes that the rotation is “a prelude to broad equity gains this year,” adding that investors should “stay nimble” in the face of anticipated volatility.
“We believe this market chop is an opportunity for new cash in U.S. Large Cap Equities and the Financials sector, which has pulled back and remains among our favorite sectors,” he said. “Going forward, we’ll continue looking through headline volatility to focus on the economic and earnings improvement that we expect.”
— Sean Conlon
Private credit is too exposed to software, says Marathon’s Richards
Marathon Asset Management Chair Bruce Richards said private credit has unnecessarily high exposure to the turbulent software sector. However, he wrote off risks that this could create problems for the broader market.
Troubles in the software sector have been “a train coming down the tracks that you could see from some distance,” Richards told Bloomberg.
Richards said that private credit have “way too much” exposure to the industry, but that he wasn’t concerned about contagion. Software stocks have whipsawed in recent weeks amid fears that artificial intelligence could make the sector obsolete.
“We think there’s going to be opportunities in the software sector,” he said. “But you have to play very smart.”
— Alex Harring
Evercore names its Nvidia derivative beneficiaries after earnings
Evercore ISI in a Wednesday note said details within Nvidia‘s recent earnings report have implications for a slew of other companies.
With Nvidia’s sovereign business tripling year-over-year, Evercore believes Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Cisco will benefit as sovereign strength is a positive for these companies that rely on original equipment manufacturers.
Network spend is growing at a rapid pace, and Evercore sees that continuing. Set to benefit are Arista Networks, Ciena and Cisco again. Nvidia detailed GPUs in active use across three generations remain fully utilized, which is bullish for GPU cloud companies like CoreWeave.
Lastly, with a more than $30 billion increase in purchase commitments compared to last year, data center infrastructure plays like Amphenol Corporation and Vertiv look like winners in this environment, according to Evercore.
— Davis Giangiulio
Recent tech high fliers Broadcom, Applied Materials, Lam Research, Western Digital slide 6-7%
Broadcom shares Thursday
— Scott Schnipper
Nvidia on pace for worst day in nearly a year
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Nvidia shares were down around 5%, putting them on pace for their worst day since April of last year. This comes even after the chipmaker posted quarterly results that beat expectations, while its revenue guidance also exceeded estimates.
NVDA 1-yr bar chart
— Fred Imbert
S&P 500 opens little changed
The S&P 500 began Thursday’s session little changed.
The broad market index hovered around the flatline, while the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 141 points, or 0.4%.
— Sean Conlon
J.M. Smucker, Qnity, Lantheus Holdings among the stocks making premarket moves
Jars of Smucker’s jams are displayed on a store shelf on June 30, 2025 in San Anselmo, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Here are some of the names moving before the opening bell:
- J.M. Smucker — The food stock popped 7% on better-than-expected fiscal third-quarter results. Smucker earned $2.38 per share, excluding certain items, on revenue of $2.34 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet expected a profit of $2.27 per share on revenue of $2.32 billion.
- Qnity — Shares of the solutions and materials provider for semiconductors jumped more than 3.5% after an earnings and revenue beat. Qnity also issued better-than-expected earnings guidance for full-year 2026 and in-line revenue projections. The company on Thursday also announced a multiyear plan, which includes goals to boost productivity through automation and artificial intelligence tools.
- Lantheus Holdings – The stock shed nearly 5% after the radiopharmaceutical firm issued lower-than-expected forward guidance for this year, seeing earnings in a range of $5-$5.25 per share. Analysts polled by FactSet expected an outlook of $5.51 in earnings per share.
To see more stocks making premarket moves, read the full story here.
— Fred Imbert, Michelle Fox
Jobless claims total 212,000, below expectations
Initial unemployment claims edged higher last week but stayed within a historical range, suggesting that employers continue to hold off on layoffs even amid weak hiring, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
First-time filings for benefits totaled a seasonally adjusted 212,000 for the week ending Feb. 21, up 4,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised total but below the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 215,000. On a longer-term basis, the four-week moving average rose by just 750 to 220,250.
Continuing claims, which run a week behind, dropped by 31,000 to 1.833 million.
— Jeff Cox
U.S. trade partners aren’t certain deals are safe after Supreme Court tariff ruling
U.S.President Donald J. Trump delivers the first State of the Union address of his second term to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, February 24, 2026.
Kenny Holston/the New York Times | Via Reuters
President Donald Trump defended his tariff agenda during his State of the Union address Tuesday, even as a Supreme Court ruling striking down his emergency tariffs cast fresh confusion over the raft of trade deals negotiated with global partners.
The court ruled last Friday that the president had exceeded his authority by imposing tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Trump has said he planned to do so again within the bounds of the law.
Almost immediately after, Trump replaced it with a 10% tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 that took effect on Tuesday. He had also threatened to increase it to 15% tariffs under Section 122, but it is unclear when they would take effect.
The ruling has raised questions about bilateral trade agreements structured around IEEPA tariff rates, prompting foreign governments to reassess their positions. Read more.
— Anniek Bao
Stellantis posts first-ever annual loss
Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa speaks during an event in Turin, Italy, Nov. 25, 2025.
Daniele Mascolo | Reuters
Jeep maker Stellantis posted its first annual loss on record after taking big write-downs due to electric vehicles. The company lost more than $26 billion, or 22.3 billion euros. That includes write-downs totaling 25.4 billion euros.
“Our 2025 full year results reflect the cost of over-estimating the pace of the energy transition and of the need to reset our business around our customers’ freedom to choose from the full range of electric, hybrid and internal combustion technologies,” Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa said in a statement.
U.S.-listed shares of Stellantis fell about 0.3% in the premarket.
Read more about the company’s latest results here.
— Sam Meredith, Fred Imbert
Nvidia’s stock sees only marginal gains after better-than-expected results.
Nvidia stock is up 1.3% in pre-market trading on Thursday, as investor concerns around the AI infrastructure boom dampened enthusiasm about its better-than-expected earnings.
Revenue for its fiscal fourth-quarter hit $68.13 billion, ahead of analyst estimates of $66.21 billion, according to LSEG. Total revenue climbed 73% from the figure Nvidia reported a year ago and guidance also came in ahead of expectations.
“The debate has shifted away from near-term results and toward the sustainability of AI capex spending, amid concerns around its quantum, monetisation and potential cashflow degradation,” Richard Clode, portfolio manager at Janus Henderson Investors, told CNBC by email. Read more.
— Kai Nicol-Schwarz
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says markets ‘got it wrong’ on AI’s threat to software
Jensen Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia, attends the 56th annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 21, 2026.
Denis Balibouse | Reuters
The markets may have overestimated the threat artificial intelligence poses to software companies, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
“I think the markets got it wrong,” he said in an interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick. “Nobody’s going to service better than ServiceNow, and they’re going to come up with agents that are really fine-tuned and optimized for the work that uses the tools that they have.”
Huang’s comments come at a precarious time for software companies, whose stocks have been rattled amid rising worries over whether AI could upend their business models. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV), whose holdings include Salesforce, Palo Alto Networks and Intuit, is down more than 10% in February alone.
Read more from CNBC’s Anniek Bao and Becky Quick on Huang’s latest comments here.
— Darla Mercado
Copper futures head for seventh straight monthly advance, longest in 15 years
Copper futures, often called Dr. Copper for their use in electronics and building materials and utility in gauging the health of the economy, rallied another 0.9% Wednesday, on pace to advance for a seventh consecutive month in February.
May contracts are ahead by a little more than 2% in February and are set to record their longest monthly advance since February 2011, when prices rose for eight straight months. So far in 2026, copper futures are higher by 6.4%.
Copper miners have benefited. The $8 billion Global X Copper Miners ETF (COPX), a portfolio of 41 stocks, has gained 12% in February alone, over 30% year to date and more than 140% in the past 12 months.
Copper Miners ETF over past 12 months.
— Scott Schnipper, Gina Francolla
Nvidia, Snowflake, Trade Desk among stocks moving Thursday evening
Check out the companies making headlines in after-hours trading:
- Nvidia — Nvidia reported strong earnings and revenue for the fiscal fourth-quarter, leading shares to add more than 1% in extended trading. Nvidia reported adjusted earnings of $1.62 per share, while analysts expected $1.53 per share, according to LSEG. The chipmaker’s revenue of $68.13 billion for the period also exceeded the $66.21 billion estimated, driven by significant growth in its core data center business.
- Snowflake – Shares of the software company slipped more than 2%. Snowflake said that its first-quarter product revenue would range between $1.262 billion and $1.267 billion, just slightly higher than the FactSet consensus call for $1.26 billion.
- Trade Desk — Shares of the advertising tech company plunged about 16% after Trade Desk called for first-quarter adjusted EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, of roughly $195 million, falling significantly short of the $223 million expected from analysts polled by FactSet. Trade Desk also missed on first-quarter revenue projections, but its fourth-quarter results beat the Street’s estimates.
For the full list, read here.
— Pia Singh
