Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq fall to end losing month as AI worries buffet markets

The standoff between Anthropic and the Trump administration took an added turn on Friday afternoon after the President announced all federal agencies have been ordered to stop using Anthropic.

“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” wrote Trump on social media.

“Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology,” he added.

The comments came after the AI developer’s CEO, Dario Amodei, said the company would cut ties with the government rather than lift restrictions on usage of its artificial intelligence models.

“We cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Amodei wrote in response to the Defense Department’s demands to use the AI model for “all lawful purposes.”

It’s fitting that February ended with another tech sell-off led by software, as the iShares software ETF (IGV) dropped roughly 10% for the month after probing last summer’s lows earlier this week.

A few names bucked the trend — RingCentral (RNG) gained about 40% while Cisco (CSCO) and SAP (SAP) were little changed. But the story is the breadth of the red and the technical damage.

Microsoft (MSFT) is down almost 9%, wiping out over $270 billion in market capitalization, while Oracle (ORCL) fell nearly 13% for a $60 billion drop. Palantir (PLTR), Intuit (INTU), and Palo Alto Networks (PANW) each shed about $25 billion.

On the other end of the tape, the biggest drawdowns were ugly: Unity (U) and Atlassian (TEAM) were both off over 35%, while Asana (ASAN) declined 30% and Zscaler (ZS) only a little less.

The streaks underline how persistent the pressure has been: Paycom (PAYC) tracked a seventh straight down month, and Tyler (TYL) declined eight in a row.

SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) is looking at confidentially filing paperwork for an initial public offering as early as next month, according to Bloomberg.

The move to file with the SEC in March would keep Elon Musk’s rocketry company on track for a June offering, ahead of other potential mega-IPOs this year from frontier AI developers OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT).

After acquiring Musk’s xAI company in February, SpaceX is now valued at $1.25 trillion. Through the IPO process, the company may look for a valuation of more than $1.75 trillion. Such an offering would immediately place SpaceX among the “Magnificent Seven” and other Big Tech giants as among of the largest companies in the world.

The SpaceX IPO would raise as much as $50 billion, outstripping Saudi Aramco’s record $29 billion IPO, according to Bloomberg.

In December, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX had told employees the company was entering the regulatory “quiet period” required ahead of a public offering, and that the IPO would be aimed at funding an “insane flight rate” for its developmental Starship rocket, a base on the moon, and data centers in space.

Gold (GC=F) futures climbed above $5,250 on Friday, extending gains for a seventh month in a row as traders flocked to a safe-haven asset amid ongoing Iran-US tensions.

Gold futures have rallied roughly 20% year to date as precious metals have found their footing again after an abrupt pullback in late January.

Silver (SI=F) futures have risen 14% over the past week, extending year-to-date gains of 21%.

The rise in precious metals prices comes as the United States has been increasing its military presence in the Middle East. Talks between the U.S. and Iran have not produced the outcome Donald Trump is seeking.

“I’m not happy with the fact that they’re not willing to give us what we have to have. I’m not thrilled with that. We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters on Friday.

The latest worry in the private credit space is out, and shares of publicly traded alternative asset managers are getting hit again.

Shares of Apollo (APO), Blackstone (BX), Ares (ARES), BlackRock (BLK), and Blue Owl (OWL) all fell on Friday, with Apollo stock losing nearly 9% to serve as the laggard of the group. (Disclosure: Yahoo is a portfolio company of funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management.)

Friday’s drop comes after a BDC sponsored by BlackRock and another sponsored by Apollo both cut their dividend. BDCs, or business development companies, are the publicly traded vehicles that house private credit investments aimed at a broader investment audience.

BlackRock TCP Capital Corp. (TCPC) said Friday that it would pay a $0.17 per share dividend in the first quarter, a drop from the $0.25 per share paid in the fourth quarter. Shares of that vehicle fell 9% on Friday.

Apollo’s MidCap Financial Investment Corporation (MFIC) said that it would pay a $0.31 per share dividend to shareholders following a $0.38 per share dividend in the prior quarter.

In its earnings release, MidCap CIO Ted McNulty said, “With respect to software, our exposure is meaningfully lower than the broader BDC industry. As of December 31, 2025, software represented only 11.4% of MFIC’s portfolio at fair value. We have constructed a portfolio that we believe is relatively resilient to AI‑related risks, with an emphasis on businesses that have long‑standing, entrenched customer relationships.”

Shares of MidCap fell nearly 8% on Friday.

Fears about AI impacting software companies have weighed on stocks across the tech industry.

The ripple effects into the private credit world — and the broader financial system — have followed this month, and are one of the defining stories of the market so far, with two months of 2026 about to be in the books.

Yahoo Finance’s Claire Boston reports:

Read more here.

The Federal Reserve is challenging two subpoenas for US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Yahoo Finance’s Jennifer Schonberger reports:

Read more here.

Gold (GC=F) is back in February, up about 11% on the month and sitting only 2% below its late-January record closing high.

Silver (SI=F) has risen from the ashes of its historic late-January washout — up 19% and extending its winning streak to 10 months. Compared to gold, it’s a bit farther from its record high (19%).

Dr. Copper (HG=F) is quietly supporting the hard-asset bid as well, up more than 1% in February and off only about 3% from its record.

Crypto is sending a different message. Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is down about 15% in February, and as Ines Ferré wrote earlier, it’s on pace for a fifth straight monthly loss — still nearly 50% below its October 2025 peak.

Ether (ETH-USD) is also down for a fifth straight month, with solana (SOL-USD) and XRP (XRP-USD) deep in the red as well.

Defensive sectors are leading the February scoreboard, with Utilities (XLU) up about 10% and having the sector’s best month since 2003.

Consumer Staples (XLP) are up about 8%, alongside steady gains in Energy (XLE), which remains the best-performing sector year to date (up 24%).

Rounding out the defensives, Real Estate (XLRE) and Health Care (XLV) are up about 6% and 3%, respectively.

But 2026 has not been the year for the “Magnificent Seven” and the tech trade. The three megacap sectors — Communication Services (XLC), Technology (XLK), and Consumer Discretionary (XLY) — are all down 2% to 4% in February, with finicky Financials (XLF) at the bottom.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) might be down slightly this month, but it’s still within 1.5% of its all-time closing high in January. As the godfather of technical analysis, Ralph Acampora, has famously quipped, “Rotation is the lifeblood of a bull market.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) is on course to snap its eight-month win streak, putting February on pace to be its worst month since April 2025 — even after logging three record closing highs earlier in the month.

But the Dow Jones Transportation Average (^DJT) is having its best month since May 2025 — up five straight months (its longest streak since 2020) and notching four record closes in February.

All the more impressive: Transports sit within 1% of a record closing high despite getting dragged down by the AI disruption trade twice this month.

The daily chart now looks like a clean pennant formation, with the 20-day moving average to the downside and the Feb. 6 record closing high around 19,900 to the upside.

More than 100 companies have filed lawsuits with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency seeking refunds after the US Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down the White House’s IEEPA tariff regime, according to Bloomberg.

Since the ruling, a mix of public corporations and private companies have filed lawsuits, including FedEx (FDX), Dollar General (DG), On Holding AG (ONON), L’Oreal (OR.PA), and Dyson.

The Supreme Court’s ruling, which found President Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs on a range of other nations illegal, did not provide guidance on refunds. Analysts have estimated that the total cost of refunds could exceed $170 billion.

With no guidance from the Supreme Court, judgment on refunds now goes to the US Court of International Trade. In response to press comments, Trump said about refunds, “I guess it has to get litigated,” and suggested the process could take years, according to Bloomberg.

Bloomberg noted that many of the companies suing CBP have been smaller corporations that don’t have the scale and balance sheet of major public companies to quickly reshuffle supply chains and negotiate pricing agreements.

Long-term US bonds are having their best month in a year, as the iShares 20+ Year T-Bond ETF (TLT) is up 4% in February.

Bond yields — which move opposite to bond prices — posted their biggest monthly drop in a year. The US 10-year yield (^TNX) is down 26 basis points, and the 30-year (^TYX) is down 23 basis points.

The catalysts boil down to two main themes: tariff uncertainty after the Supreme Court’s ruling (and the scramble to game out what comes next for trade policy) and the recurring “AI scare trade” that periodically smacks down growth narratives and prods investors toward defense.

Meanwhile, the major stock indexes are tracking small losses for the month. Overall, this is good news for the 60/40 portfolio: bonds (the 40%) are finally doing what they’re supposed to do when stocks (the 60%) stumble — rally.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell back toward $66,000 on Friday, on track for a fifth month of losses as the crypto market remains volatile.

Earlier this week, the token rebounded near $70,000, but investors sold into the rally.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency is down roughly 24% year to date after tumbling from an all-time high of about $126,000 in October.

Ether (ETH-USD) has declined even more on a relative basis on Friday, sinking more than 3%. The second-largest cryptocurrency has fallen 37% year to date.

Industry watchers have been closely monitoring potential catalysts that could lift prices this year. On Polymarket, the odds of Congress passing crypto regulation, specifically the Clarity Act, have climbed to 67%.

Oil prices shot higher on Friday morning after US-Iran talks ended in Geneva on Thursday with no deal and the US began ordering evacuations from embassies in the Middle East.

Futures on Brent crude (BZ=F), the international pricing benchmark, jumped by 2.9% to change hands above $72.90, while those on the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude (CL=F) rose by a stronger 3% to trade above $67.

Both energy products are trading at six-month highs.

On Thursday, the US and Iran remained far apart on key redline issues, even as Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who is mediating the talks, said progress has been made. The two sides are now set for the next round of talks in Vienna, with technical teams — such as nuclear and banking experts — expected to join.

More pressingly for oil prices, the US has continued to send military firepower to the region, deploying more combat assets to the Gulf, and has begun taking security measures for Americans in the region.

On Friday, the US embassy in Jerusalem said it had authorized the evacuation of non-essential personnel and family members, noting that those persons included “may wish to consider leaving Israel while commercial flights are available.”

Reports from regional news publications also suggested that the US had ordered the evacuation of personnel from the US embassies in Baghdad, though a spokesperson for the State Department denied the claim in an X post.

Oil prices are highly sensitive to potential conflict in Iran, with the most focus on the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping chokepoint through which roughly 20 million barrels per day of petroleum products pass. Iran, which largely controls the strait, has threatened to close the waterway, along with threats of severe retaliation if the US strikes.

The US stock market sank at the opening bell on Friday after the latest reading of the producer price index showed wholesale inflation rose more than expected in January. Meanwhile, Block’s (XYZ) mass layoffs reignited fears of AI-led corporate disruption.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) saw the largest loss at the start of trading, dropping roughly 1.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) shed 1%, or just under 500 points, and the S&P 500 (^GSPC) lost roughly 0.9%.

On Thursday, Jack Dorsey’s Block said it will trim nearly half its workforce as AI reshapes operations. Shares of Block (XYZ) jumped about 20% after the bell on Friday. Elsewhere, Netflix (NFLX) shares rose after the streaming giant gave up its pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), leaving the way open for Paramount Skydance (PSKY) to purchase the Hollywood studio.

In a massive new funding round, OpenAI raised $110 billion from a group of investors, including Nvidia and Amazon, valuing the ChatGPT maker at $730 billion, not including the money raised.

Investments include $50 billion from Amazon, $30 billion from Nvidia, and $30 billion from Softbank, OpenAI said in a press release announcing the raise.

Shares in Nvidia and Amazon fell after the opening bell on Friday.

“We are entering a new phase where frontier AI moves from research into daily use at global scale,” OpenAI said in its press release. “Leadership will be defined by who can scale infrastructure fast enough to meet demand, and turn that capacity into products people rely on.”

The company also announced a new deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that will see the two companies build a “Stateful Runtime Environment” run on OpenAI’s models that “allows developers to keep context, remember prior work, work across software tools and data sources, and access compute.” The product is expected to launch “in the next few months,” according to the press release.

OpenAI is also expanding its existing partnership with Nvidia with the “use of 3GW of dedicated inference capacity and 2 GW of training on Vera Rubin systems,” the company said.

US producer-level prices advanced faster than expected in January, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Prices increased by 0.5% in January over the previous month, in line with December’s gain but above economist expectations an increase of 0.3%, according to consensus estimates. Excluding the more volatile food and energy costs, producers’ prices advanced by 0.8% over the previous month, more than double the 0.3% growth economists had predicted.

Year-on-year, headline PPI rose by 2.9% against expectations of 2.6%, while prices ex-food and energy rose 3.6% against expectations of 3%.

Services led all price inflation in January, with costs advancing by 0.8%, the largest monthly gain since July 2025. Meanwhile, costs for goods declined by 0.3%, tempering the much larger movement in services.

A 14.4% increase in margins for “professional and commercial equipment wholesaling” contributed 20% of the jump in services prices, according to BLS data.

In goods, prices of “nonferrous metals,” including copper and aluminum, grew by 4.8%, while gasoline fell by 5.5%. Commercial and industrial electric power prices also fell, the BLS said.

Treasury yields slipped on Friday morning as investors awaited data on wholesale inflation from the January producer price index.

The 10-year bond (^TNX) briefly fell to 3.99%, marking its first time below 4% since November. The shorter-run five-year yield (^FVX) declined to 3.58%, while the longer-run 30-year yield (^TYX) dropped to 4.66%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the producer price index this morning. The Street expects headline demand increased 0.3% in January. While continued easing in wholesale inflation would likely push yields lower, some strategists see higher yields remaining sticky.

“We’re seeing a lot of instability in the market right now, whether it’s concerns over the federal funds rate, higher debt levels at the federal side,” Schwab Center for Financial Research fixed income strategist Cooper Howard told Yahoo Finance, adding, “that should really keep that term premium elevated going forward and therefore probably put a floor on how much lower longer term yields could potentially go.”

Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) CEO Dario Amodei issued a statement Thursday evening, saying his company won’t submit to the Department of Defense’s demands that it be allowed to use its AI technology as it sees fit, within the law.

The Defense Department and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have threatened to force Anthropic to give the Pentagon full use of its models under the Defense Production Act — or, conversely, declare it a supply chain threat and force other Pentagon vendors who work with the AI company to stop using its software.

“These threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Amodei said in his statement.

Anthropic and the Pentagon have been in an ongoing standoff about how the DOD will use its Claude AI. The company says that while it already works with the Defense Department, including within the government’s classified networks and by advocating for strong chip export controls to China, it wants assurances that the DOD will not use its models for the mass surveillance of Americans or for fully autonomous weapons.