Market Report, 2026-02-23

Stocks started the week on a bad note, giving back nearly all the gains from last week as the U.S. President continues his pushback against a Supreme Court ruling and imposes 10% global tariffs under a different law. At the same time, newer research points out the risks of AI to multiple industries, sending related stocks downward. IBM tumbled 13% after Anthropic said its Claude Code can help modernize COBOL, a programming language mainly run on IBM computers. This is an emerging phenomenon in the market over the past couple of months, where AI disruptions are occasionally being priced with more uncertainty rather than purely bullish sentiment, and the market has been dragged down by those adjustments as software stocks now dominate major indices.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 822 points to 48,804. The NASDAQ dipped 1.21% to 24,709. The S&P 500 posted a loss of 1.04% to 6,838. Financials was the biggest losing sector of the day with a 3.35% decline, followed by consumer discretionary and technology. This is because AI could change the cost structure of financial services, leading to significant uncertainty about future earnings.

As investors sought safe instruments, the bond market and gold saw significant gains. The U.S. 5-year Treasury yield declined by 6 basis points to 3.59%, and the 10-year yield declined by 5 basis points to 4.03%. Gold rose 3.33%, topping 5,250.

Factory orders data released today showed a 0.7% decline, compared to a 0.2% forecast and 2.7% in the prior report.

As more developments unfold regarding trade policies, we will provide further updates. This is Adams Wealth Advisors. Thank you for listening.