Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., February 25, 2026.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Stock futures fell Wednesday night as investors digested earnings results from Nvidia and Salesforce.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 97 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures fell nearly 0.2%, while Nasdaq 100 futures dropped about 0.3%.
In after-hours trading, Nvidia shares were last slightly lower after the chip giant posted a fourth-quarter earnings and revenue beat. Salesforce tumbled more than 4% after the software company projected disappointing fiscal 2027 revenue estimates.
Salesforce — which has been one of the biggest victims of recent artificial intelligence disruption fears — weighed slightly on Dow futures in extended trading, reigniting concerns about the software sector.
The moves follow an upbeat day for U.S. equities. The S&P 500 closed Wednesday higher by 0.8%, marking a second straight day of gains, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jumped about 1.3%. The 30-stock Dow gained roughly 307 points, or 0.6%.
Software and tech names bounced back in the regular session, with Oracle gaining 1.2% and each of the “Magnificent Seven” tech giants closing in the green. Microsoft, a notable laggard this year, gained about 3% on the day.
Still, sentiment has been fragile in software and cybersecurity stocks this year as worries remain about the rapidly developing capabilities of AI products that could interfere with incumbent software vendors’ businesses.
“When you look at software right now, the earnings revisions on a one to two-year basis are positive,” J.P. Morgan Global Wealth Management U.S. equity strategist Abigail Yoder said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”
“So this isn’t about what’s going to happen to software earnings in the next one to two years,” she said. “This is about their terminal value in ascribing a certain valuation to that, which I think the market is just wrangling around right now.”
On the earnings front, traders will await results from Warner Bros. Discovery, Dell Technologies and CoreWeave, all due on Thursday.
Elsewhere, investors are awaiting weekly jobless claims data, due Thursday, and the January producer price index reading out Friday.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says markets ‘got it wrong’ on AI’s threat to software
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
