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Informist, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026                                      Tel +91 (22) 6985-4000

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Equity Alert: US indices end higher after break for Presidents' Day

 

MUMBAI--0739 IST--Equity indices in the US rose on Tuesday, after a break on Monday on account of Presidents' Day. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index ended higher for the second straight session and the NASDAQ Composite ended higher after falling for four consecutive sessions.     

 

Investors switched to financial stocks from beaten-down stocks of software companies, which have seen losses this year, CNBC reported. Shares of Citigroup ended nearly 3% higher and those of JPMorgan Chase & Co. ended 1.5% higher. Shares of software company ServiceNow ended over 1% lower, falling around 31% so far this year. Shares of other software companies AutoDesk and Palo Alto Networks ended nearly 3% and over 2% lower respectively. Shares of SalesForce, down nearly 3%, and shares of Oracle, down nearly 4%, have declined 30% and 21% so far this year. 

 

The tech sector continues to be weighed down by fears that artificial intelligence could replace the services offered by industry-specific software providers, CNBC said. "We just need time to see what earnings are going to look like from some of these companies," Leah Bennett, chief investment strategist at Concurrent Investment Advisors, was reported as saying. "I think those that aren't able to compete and don't really have moats around their business, you're going to see a deterioration," Bennett said, adding that a disruption such as this would allow the market to make out the winners in the space. 

 

The disruption from AI has affected quite a few industries such as software, real estate, financial services, and even trucking. Last week, the weakness in the sectors pushed the S&P 500 to close lower for a second straight week, CNBC reported. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 recorded their fourth losing week in the last five, while the Nasdaq recorded its fifth consecutive weekly fall. "AI innovation and its disruption are calling into question terminal multiples in various corners of the market that is driving investors to focus on specific risks, rather than broader exposure changes," Scott Chronert, Citi US equity strategist, was reported as saying. "For now, the narrative is disconnected from good medium-term fundamental trends. The onus is on companies to convince markets of longer-run business moats, likely a Q1 reporting season theme, absent a renewed focus on a macro soft landing," he added. 

 

Investors await the US personal consumption expenditures price index on Friday. They will also monitor the minutes of the US Federal Reserve's last meeting, due on Wednesday.

 

Following are the closing levels of US indices Tuesday:  

 

Index	Level	Change in %
S&P 500	6843.22	0.1
NASDAQ Composite	22578.38	0.14
Dow Jones Industrial Average	49533.19	0.07

 

(Akshat Saksena)

 

US$1 = INR 90.67

 

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

 

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

All prices from National Stock Exchange, unless otherwise specified.

All percentage changes for share prices are rounded off to the nearest whole number; percentage changes for index values are rounded off to one decimal place.

All times are Indian Standard Time.

 

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