US stock futures ticked higher on Tuesday, attempting to stabilize after Wall Street gauges kicked off the final stretch of February with steep losses led by fears of AI disruption and tariff whiplash.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) rose 0.3%. Contracts on the S&P 500 (ES=F) climbed roughly 0.2%, while Nasdaq 100 futures (NQ=F) added 0.3%.

The cautious rebound follows a sharp sell-off on Monday as investors grappled with renewed concerns that rapid advances in AI could disrupt broad swaths of corporate America. The blue-chip Dow (^DJI) led the slump, which pushed the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) and S&P 500 (^GSPC).

Confusion over US trade deals was also still keeping markets on edge, as President Trump's new global tariff took effect on Tuesday at 10%. The White House is working on a formal order to raise the rate to 15%, per Bloomberg, as threatened by Trump. But the EU warned the levy breaches last year's trade deal, while Japan called on the US to make sure it isn't left worse off than agreed.

Looking ahead, AI leader Anthropic is set to lay out product updates and feature launches at a key event Tuesday, seen as potentially adding to pressure in cybersecurity and software stocks. Its previous releases of industry-targeted AI tools has spurred selling of shares in those sectors.

Also in focus are the latest consumer confidence data due later, as well as earnings from Home Depot (HD). Wednesday brings results from Nvidia (NVDA), the last of the "Magnificent Seven" megacaps to report, alongside results from Salesforce (CRM) and Snowflake (SNOW).

Decent quarter all things considered for Home Depot (HD).

Reasonable EPS outlook for 2026 given the tepid state of the US housing market.

Here's what Home Depot CFO Richard McPhail told me this morning on the state of the housing market:

“First of all, our customers are the homeowner – and so they're one of the most resilient customer cohorts in the economy. But they're feeling pressure like everyone else. They tell us they have concerns around housing affordability, general affordability and broader concerns over uncertainty and job loss. So there is pressure on the market. If you look at housing turnover, that's actually been frozen for three years, we have been at historical lows in housing turnover for three years in a row. So you'd say you really saw that impact during 2023 and if you look at our financial performance, 2023 and 2024 were both negative. 2025 obviously we posted positive comp sales. We posted five quarters of positive comps in a row in the United States and it feels like we have recovered slightly from that initial freeze in housing turnover. It's become more of a dynamic where our customers are feeling less certain about the economic environment, and so that has put pressure on our market. Obviously, there are mixed economic signals. If you look more closely at the GDP print from last week, and you look at durable goods and you look at residential investment on a year over year basis, both have decelerated through the year, and durable goods demand actually turned negative year over year in Q4 and residential improvement has been negative throughout the year. So I look at those as indicators that the homeowner faces a little more pressure through the year, and I look at it as proof that we're taking market share as our results have been relatively steady across the year.”

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) continued to slump, on track to log its biggest monthly fall since a flurry of big corporate collapses shook the crypto world almost four years ago.

The leading cryptocurrency dropped to $62,858 at one point, but recouped some losses to trade above $63,000 on Tuesday morning.

From Bloomberg:

[Bitcoin is] now down more than 19% in February, set for its worst monthly performance since June 2022. That year, the implosion of TerraUSD, a stablecoin project, triggered a daisy chain of failures that included crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and BlockFi, the lender.

Bitcoin is also on track for a fifth straight monthly decline, its longest losing streak since 2018 — a bruising period for crypto markets defined by the unraveling of an initial coin offering boom.

The slide — which extends a selloff that began in October — comes amid broader risk-off sentiment across global markets after President Donald Trump announced plans to raise global tariffs to 15%, a move that unsettled investors and weighed on equities and other higher-risk assets.

“President Trump’s decision to raise global tariffs to 15% rattled risk assets broadly, and Bitcoin moved with them,” said Rachael Lucas, crypto analyst at BTC Markets. “Despite the ‘digital gold’ narrative, Bitcoin continues to trade as a risk asset. When macro fear spikes, capital rotates toward traditional safe havens. Bitcoin is not there yet.”

Read more here.

Hims & Hers (HIMS) reported lower profits in the fourth quarter compared with a year ago, sending the stock down more than 5% in premarket trading.

The telehealth and drug platform reported earnings per share of $0.08, beating Wall Street estimates for $0.05 but falling from $0.11 per share a year ago, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Revenue of $617.8 million was roughly in line with estimates.

One bright spot in the earnings release was Hims & Hers 2026 revenue forecast, which came in above estimates.

Reuters reports:

The company then ​reversed course ​on its plans ​after the U.S. Food ‌and Drug Administration said it would take action against manufacturers mixing ingredients to produce copies of GLP-1 drugs, referring it to the Department of Justice for potential violations ‌of federal law.

The company forecast ​2026 revenue to be ​in the ​range of $2.7 billion to $2.9 billion, compared ‌to estimates of $2.74 billion, ​as per ​data compiled by LSEG.

Read more here.

Bloomberg reports:

Anthropic is offering some current and former employees the ability to sell shares in the company at a valuation of about $350 billion, according to people familiar with the matter — allowing them to cash in at the level of a recent $30 billion fundraising.

The company has lined up $5 billion to $6 billion for the share sale, but the final amount will depend on how many eligible Anthropic employees opt to sell, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The details have not been finalized and could still change.

Anthropic’s latest funding round, completed earlier this month, valued the company at $380 billion post-money, including the cash investors put in. Anthropic declined to comment on the new share sale.

Read more here.