2026-02-07
4 分钟Hey listeners, it's Saturday, February 7th.
I'm Jack Pitcher for The Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News in Markets,
our look at the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them.
Let's get to it.
February opened with fireworks,
with markets posting one of their most volatile weeks of the last year.
The driver, rapid advancements in AI are making investors question some long-held assumptions.
Software developers, data and research companies,
and IT services providers all got clobbered this week on concerns that AI is a threat to their businesses.
The sell-off was most pronounced on Tuesday when Wall Street analysts zoomed in on new features from Anthropics AI model,
Claude.
Its ability to assist with legal research and review prompted investors to dump shares of companies that focus on those areas.
The sell-off quickly spread to software companies,
with several recording their sharpest single-day stock declines since the pandemic.
Investors buying the DIV help stocks gain back some ground on Friday,
but the tech-focused sell-off caused an unusually large divergence among the major indexes.
For the week, the tech-heavy NASDAQ composite dropped 1.8%, while the Dow Jones industrial average,
which has less software exposure, rose 2.5% to close at a record high above the 50,000 mark.
The broad-based S&P 500 inched 0.1% lower.
Let's turn to one of the S&P 500's biggest losers for the week.