US stocks rose Tuesday, with software stocks leading the charge as Wall Street aimed to recover from steep losses amid fears of AI disruption.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) led the way up, gaining roughly 0.9%, or more than 400 points, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) picked up roughly 0.8%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) gained about 1% as AMD (AMD) surged as much as 10% after the chipmaker entered a deal to provide Meta (META) with a huge amount of GPUs for the Facebook owner's AI build-out.

The 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.

That put the spotlight on Anthropic's (ANTH.PVT) virtual event on Tuesday morning, featuring updates to its AI tools and Claude chatbot for companies. The company announced partnerships with several software companies, including Salesforce (CRM), FactSet (FDS), and DocuSign (DOCU), sparking rallies in their respective stocks.

Meanwhile, worries of a revived trade war are still keeping markets on edge, after President Trump's new 10% global tariff took effect on Tuesday. The move has thrown existing trade deals into doubt, after the EU and Japan protested that the duties leave them worse off than agreed. Investors will listen closely to Trump's State of the Union address later Tuesday for hints on his trade policy as he lays out his view of the economy.

Spirit Airlines said it has reached an agreement with its creditors that would allow the budget airline to exit bankruptcy proceedings this year.

The company said in a press release that the agreement will \\"provide Spirit with the financial support needed to finalize its restructuring and complete the remaining changes necessary to optimize the Company's fleet, network and cost structure.\\"

The airline intends to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in late spring or early summer.

The announcement comes after the embattled airline has been the subject of multiple merger and acquisition bids over the past few years.

In early 2022, Spirit agreed to merge with Frontier Airlines, controlled by Frontier Group Holdings (ULCC), in a stock-and-cash deal that Spirit ultimately terminated. Frontier made another offer in 2025, which Spirit rejected as the budget airline navigated a bankruptcy-driven restructuring.

Also in 2022, Spirit briefly entered into a merger agreement with JetBlue Airways (JBLU), but the deal was blocked by federal regulators, and JetBlue called off the deal.

Most recently, Reuters reported in December 2025 that Spirit and Frontier were once again eyeing a potential merger.

Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi reports:

AI is coming for the jobs market, Goldman Sachs warned.

\\"Job losses in AI-affected industries have been visible but moderate,\\" Goldman Sachs economist Pierfrancesco Mei wrote in a new note on Tuesday. \\"AI-driven displacement could raise the unemployment rate slightly in 2026, with upside risks from faster adoption and larger displacement.\\"

Mei's research found that job growth has slowed and turned negative in a few subindustries where AI is most ready for deployment.

The economist expects the unemployment rate to drift higher to 4.5% by year-end, from its current 4.3%, in part because jobs are being replaced by AI.

Read more here.

The Conference Board's consumer confidence index ticked up by 2.2 points in February to a reading of 91.2, signaling an improved outlook of economic conditions even as consumers' perceptions of the current macro environment skew toward pessimism.

The Expectations Index, which surveys consumers about their views on business conditions, income, and the labor market six months from now, rose by 4.8 points to 72, whereas the Present Situation Index, measuring current conditions, deteriorated by 1.8 points to 120.

Despite the improvement, the consumer confidence index remains well off its November 2024 peak, as the cost of goods and the \\"low hire, low fire\\" labor market remain top of mind for consumers.

\\"Overall, the trend is pretty disturbing,\\" The Conference Board senior US economist Yelena Shulyatyeva told Yahoo Finance. \\"Consumers continue to ... think that jobs are really hard to get. Month to month, there are drops and improvements, but the trend overall is to the downside.\\"

The Conference Board economist Yelena Shulyateva breaks down the US February consumer confidence report. pic.twitter.com/zEI1y5ELnm

— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) February 24, 2026

Shares in Salesforce (CRM), FactSet Research Systems (FDS), and DocuSign (DOCU) surged on Tuesday after leading AI developer Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) announced new tools developed in collaboration with the two companies.

FactSet picked up roughly 6%, while Salesforce and DocuSign both gained around 5% through mid-morning trading.

In a presentation Tuesday morning, Anthropic unveiled a suite of new plug-ins that the company said can help with investment banking and wealth management tasks like deal review and portfolio analysis, and with HR tasks such as bringing documents into alignment with in-house tone.

Several of the new plug-ins, Anthropic said, were designed in collaboration with those companies.

The positive price action comes just weeks after an early wave of the so-called \\"AI scare trade\\" sent shares in software and legal companies plummeting alongside several other industries investors viewed as susceptible to AI disruption.

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook said the Fed's standard approach to monetary policy may be unable to combat an AI-driven rise in unemployment without increasing inflation, according to reporting by Bloomberg.

“If AI continues to raise productivity, economic growth could remain strong, even as churn in the labor market leads to an increase in unemployment. In a productivity boom such as this, a rise in unemployment may not indicate increased slack,” Cook said Tuesday at an event in Washington.

“As such, our normal demand-side monetary policy may not be able to ameliorate an AI-caused unemployment spell without also increasing inflationary pressure.\\"

Cook's comments come after other Fed governors have said in recent days that the uptake on AI could push interest rates higher, contrary to President Trump's repeated overtures for rate cuts.

In comments at an event in New York last week, Fed Governor Michael Barr said he expects that AI is \\"unlikely to be a reason for lowering policy rates.\\" Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson said earlier in the month that \\"persistent increases in productivity growth are likely to result in an increase in the neutral rate, at least temporarily.”

The Fed kept rates unchanged at its last meeting in January. As of Thursday morning, traders were pricing in 96% odds that the Fed will do the same at its upcoming meeting in March, leaving interest rates at their current target range of 3.5% to 3.75%.

The US stock market began trading on Tuesday on mixed footing as investors looked to shake off losses led by the \\"AI scare trade\\" as President Trump's new global tariff came into effect.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) gained roughly 0.3% in the lone bright spot among the major indexes. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) lost roughly 0.2%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell a steeper 0.3%, as AMD (AMD) and Meta (META) signed a deal that will see Meta buy 6 gigawatts' worth of AMD GPUs.

Investors are watching a virtual event from Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), which is expected to offer updates on its AI tools and Claude chatbot for companies, as AI fears continue to roll through the market.

Through the afternoon and evening, attention will turn toward President Trump's State of the Union address, scheduled for 9:00 p.m. ET. The administration's new 10% global tariff took effect on Tuesday, and according to several reports, the White House is now working on a formal order to raise the rate to 15%, as threatened by Trump.

Waymo is expanding its driverless robotaxi service to new markets in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando, the company said in a statement Tuesday morning. Rides begin the same day.

Shares in Alphabet (GOOG), which owns Waymo, were up slightly in premarket trading.

The expansion brings Waymo to 10 markets and puts the company on track to hit 1 million rides per week by the end of the year, the company said Tuesday. The new cities are \\"critical to our plans, as we lay groundwork for service in 20+ cities,\\" Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, said in the statement.

In the new markets, Waymo said it will will begin by inviting “select riders” who have downloaded the app in those cities, with additional users invited throughout the year.

The move from Waymo also comes after a setback last week in the north, when New York Gov. Kathy Hochul axed a proposal to allow driverless rides in the wider state outside New York City.

Yahoo Finance's David Hollerith reports:

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon said Monday that the financial world looks a lot like the heyday in the years ahead of the global financial crisis.

“Unfortunately, we did see this in '05, '06, '07, almost the same thing,\\" Dimon said at the firm's annual investor day in New York on Monday. \\"The rising tide lifting all boats, everyone was making a lot of money, people leveraging to the hilt. The sky was the limit.”

“My own view is people are getting a little comfortable that this is real — these high asset prices and high volumes and that we won't have any kind of problem whatsoever. So we're quite cautious about that,” Dimon added.

Dimon’s comments come amid a turbulent market period, as investors have dumped stocks across a range of industries over fears that artificial intelligence will disrupt their core businesses. In the financial industry, these challenges have been most acutely felt in private credit markets.

Read more here.

Meta (META) will buy up to 6 gigawatts' worth of AI processing chips, or GPUs, and other AI equipment from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) under the terms of a multiyear deal announced by the two companies on Tuesday.

AMD shares jumped by 10% in premarket trading on the news, while Meta's shares fell by roughly 0.4%.

Under the agreement, AMD issued Meta a performance-based warrant for up to 160 million shares of AMD stock, \\"structured to vest as specific milestones associated with Instinct GPU shipments are achieved,\\" the companies said. The first tranche of stock is scheduled to vest in time with AMD's first 1-gigawatt shipment of computing technology to Meta.

Shipments are expected to begin in the second half of 2026, the companies said.

For Meta, the deal with AMD comes right on the heels of another \\"long-term partnership\\" signed last week with chipmaking leader Nvidia (NVDA), a direct competitor to AMD. Under the terms of that deal, Meta will increase its use of Nvidia processing equipment throughout its AI workloads.

Meta shares closed Feb. 17, the day the Nvidia deal was announced, roughly flat, while Nvidia closed the day up 1.8%.

Bloomberg reports:

Shares in companies with tangible productive assets are outperforming as investors seek havens from artificial intelligence disruption, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. strategists.

The Goldman team said their basket of capital intensive stocks whose economic value derives from physical assets has outperformed a capital light group reliant on human or digital capital by about 35% since the start of 2025.

Investors are increasingly turning to stocks with what the strategists called the “HALO effect,” for heavy assets and low obsolescence, in sectors like utilities, basic resources and energy, the team including Guillaume Jaisson said in a client note.

ASML Holding NV, Safran SA, LVMH, Air Liquide SA and Airbus SE are among stocks the team selected in a basket of European capital intensive names. L’Oreal SA, Adyen NV, DSV AS and Siemens Healthineers AG are a few of those in the capital light basket.

Read more here.

Whirlpool (WHR) stock fell 8% before the bell on Tuesday after The Wall Street Journal reported that the appliance maker plans to sell 800 million shares to pay off its debt.

Keysight Technologies, Inc. (KEYS) stock jumped 15% before the bell after it beat analysts' expectations for its first quarter earnings and released an upbeat fiscal second-quarter outlook.

Planet Fitness (PLNT) stock fell 5% during premarket hours on Tuesday following the release of its fourth quarter earnings. The fitness operator beat revenue estimates.

Home Depot (HD) posted mixed fourth quarter results as consumer uncertainty around the housing market lingers.

In the fourth quarter, revenue fell 4% to $38.2 billion, slightly less than nearly $38.3 billion the street forecasted, per Bloomberg consensus data. Adjusted earnings came in better than expected at $2.72 per share, compared with estimates of $2.55.

Overall same-store sales grew 0.4%, compared to the expected 0.4% decline. The results were driven by a higher ticket size, but drop off in consumer transactions.

\\"For the fourth quarter, our results were largely in-line with our expectations, reflecting the lack of storm activity in the third quarter and ongoing consumer uncertainty and pressure in housing,\\" CEO Ted Decker said in the release, \\"Adjusting for storms, underlying demand was relatively stable throughout the year.\\"

Home Depot stock rose nearly 3% in premarket trading. Shares are up roughly 10% so far this year. For comparison, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) has been flat.

For the fiscal year, the company posted better than expected results across all key metrics.

Revenue came in at $164.68 billion, more than the $164.59 billion expected, alongside adjusted earnings of $14.69, a tick above the $14.53 expected.

Same-store sales grew 0.3%, more than the 0.2% Wall Street anticipated.

For this fiscal year, the company reiterated guidnce it shared at its investor day back in December. It expects total sales to grow in the range of 2.5% to 4.5%, alongside same-store sales growth of roughly flat to up 2%.

Adjusted earnings for the year are expected to be between flat and up 4.0% from $14.69 posted this fiscal year.

It was a decent quarter, all things considered, for Home Depot (HD).

It offered a reasonable EPS outlook for 2026, given the tepid state of the US housing market.

Here's what Home Depot CFO Richard McPhail had to say on that, speaking to me this morning.

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. [In] 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 if] you look at durable goods and you look at residential investment on a year-over-year basis, both have decelerated through the year. 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.