Recovery Effort: Tech Keys Early Gain on Deal News

Published as of: February 24, 2026, 9:10 a.m. ET

(Tuesday market open) After a brutal Monday marked by trade and AI uncertainty, key earnings vie for attention starting with Home Depot (HD). The home improvement giant rallied on better-than-expected profit growth. The rest of the market also appeared refreshed and enjoyed light early gains as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced a major AI deal with Meta Platforms (META).

While stocks delivered some "turnaround Tuesday" vibes early today, economic and geopolitical worries continued to drive a so-called "flight to safety" that has the U.S. 10-year Treasury note yield (TNX:CGI) trading near its lowest point since late November. While falling yields can provide a tailwind for stocks, this drop appeared associated with recent debt, AI, and trade worries that pushed down stocks. Today features a 2-year Treasury note auction, which might get close attention considering weak results at the last auction. If demand stays muted when results arrive this afternoon, yields could deliver their own "turnaround Tuesday."

Volatility spiked and stocks retreated Monday as AI substitution fears and "sell America" sentiment received fresh salt from President Trump's new global tariffs that hurt trade-sensitive sectors including tech and discretionary. Tariffs were originally expected to be 15% but took effect at 10%. A host of Federal Reserve speakers arrives today, starting with Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee's hawkish missive this morning pushing back on rate cut hopes and prioritizing the inflation fight.

1. Gearing up for Nvidia results: When Nvidia reports tomorrow after the close, margins might come under scrutiny. Though AI spending shows little sign of easing, Nvidia and fellow chip firms face higher bandwidth memory costs amid sector shortages, and this could affect projected margin growth. Last year, investors nicked shares of Nvidia after earnings when they saw margin guidance fall below expectations. Data center revenue, as usual, will be front and center, as will overall revenue guidance. Nvidia remains under pressure every quarter not to just exceed quarterly consensus, but to guide for growth exceeding analysts' average estimates. Nvidia's shares retreated after three of its last four earnings reports, and shares have marched mainly in place since all-time highs in late October. Analysts expect Nvidia to deliver 72% annual earnings growth to $1.53 a share and to grow annual revenue by 68% to $66.1 billion.
    
2. Concerns about private credit linger, but wider stability apparent: Shares of asset management firms became shaky lately following some hiccups in private credit, a sequel to last fall's worries about possible credit defaults. "Credit markets are getting nervous," said Cooper Howard, director of fixed income research and strategy at the Schwab Center for Financial Research. "The good news for credit is that the economy continues to chug along, which bodes well for revenues. However, there are concerns over private credit." Reassuringly, credit spreads—a key indicator of credit market health—remain tight, but investors might want to monitor their path. Low spreads suggest there isn't too much stress in the credit market yet, but rising spreads often precede trouble. Investors can monitor the spreads of corporate bond indexes through FRED®, the St. Louis Federal Reserve Economic Data website. Private asset manager stocks fell sharply Monday, extending losses and putting pressure on the financial sector.
    
3. Financials hit by multiple storms: Wall Street veterans say it's hard to have a rally without financial stocks participating. This year provides more evidence, with the financials sector last among all S&P 500 sectors, down more than 7% year-to-date. It's also the worst-performing sector over the last year, down just slightly versus 3% or better gains for all other S&P 500 sectors. The latest blow might be concerns about private equity, but that's one of many concerns dragging bank, credit card, and financial services stocks. Worries accelerated this year that AI might replace some functions provided by financial firms, and the recent tariff confusion and subsequent market pullback yesterday hit credit card firms as investors grew concerned about a possible decline in the "wealth effect." That's when shareholders reduce spending as they become anxious about their investments. If there's any support in sight for battered financial stocks, perhaps it's earnings, where fourth quarter financial sector EPS rose 9.2%, better than the 6.4% analysts had expected, according to FactSet. Net profit margin also rose almost 20%. Looking ahead, analysts expect solid 14.9% first quarter earnings growth for financials.

• Home Depot (HD) built a 2.7% early morning rally after earnings per share of $2.72 easily beat the FactSet consensus of $2.53. Revenue and guidance met analysts' expectations, while sales at stores opened a year or more rose 0.4%. The company expects comparable sales growth to be flat to up 2% this year, and it approved a dividend increase.
   
• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which has struggled this month, climbed more than 10% early Tuesday, propelled by news that it signed a multi-year deal with Meta Platforms (META). In a press release, AMD said the deal will deploy six gigawatts of AMD's graphics processing units (GPU) to "power Meta's next generation of AI infrastructure." The deal comes a week after Meta announced a deal with Nvidia on AI.
   
• Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) fell almost 5% after earnings slightly exceeded expectations but guidance appeared to disappoint the market.
   
• Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) climbed slightly early after saying it had received a higher takeover offer from Paramount Skydance (PSKY), CNBC reported.
   
• Whirlpool (WHR) fell 11% early today after the company announced what it called a "strategic recapitalization that includes the selling of $800 million in new shares as part of an effort to fight debt, The Wall Street Journal reported.
   
• Six of 11 S&P 500 sectors finished up Monday, led by defensive areas like staples, health care, and utilities. Energy also performed well as Iran concerns kept crude oil near recent highs.
   
• In tech trading, IBM (IBM) plunged 13% Monday, becoming the latest company battered by worries about AI competition for key products. In this case, it was Anthropic announcing capabilities for use of programming language used to process data, CNBC reported. This could include payment processing and retail transaction systems.
   
• Financial and software sector shares suffered more pain Monday as a brutal February continued. Concerns about AI substitution hurting both industries kept shares under pressure ahead of earnings later this week from Salesforce (CRM) and Snowflake (SNOW).
   
• Software shares continued slipping Monday, including a 9% drop for AppLovin (APP) and almost 10% for CrowdStrike (CRWD), as the sector keeps suffering from AI substation concerns. AI worries got exacerbated Monday by a report from Citrini Research, an independent publisher, that said AI could cause major blows for white collar workers and firms in the financial and consumer spaces, Barron's noted.
   
• In financials, credit card issuers fell amid concerns that a flagging stock market might slow spending among higher-income consumers. American Express (AXP) slid more than 7% and big banks also retreated.
   
• The same consumer spending concerns hurt airline, cruise ship, apparel, automotive, and casino stocks Monday. Tesla (TSLA) fell 3%.
   
• Over the past week, investor inflows were largest for global exchange-traded funds and outflows were largest for U.S. large-caps.
   
• Bitcoin (/BTC) dropped 2% early today. It dropped more than 4% Monday amid risk-off sentiment that also hurt shares of crypto-related stocks.

After spending months above its key moving averages, the S&P 500 Index (SPX—candlesticks) trades in a narrow range between its 100-day moving average of 6,823 (blue line) and its 50-day of 6,896 (red line). Each move above or below those lines since early this month met relatively quick buying or selling to shift the index back into its lane. The 100-day was tested several times lately and held, but the chart pattern doesn't appear positive. "The bearish technical view might highlight the high frequency of 'support tests' at this moving average, which could lend to an eventual break to the downside," said Nathan Peterson, director of derivatives research and strategy at SCFR. "In other words, it's technically more bullish to see a 'V' bounce off key support levels, rather than multiple tests in a short period of time."

Check out the investors' calendar for a summary of the top economic events and earnings reports on tap this week.

February 25: Expected earnings from Nvidia (NVDA), TJX Companies (TJX), Lowe's (LOW), Salesforce (CRM), Synopsys (SNPS), and Snowflake (SNOW).
February 26: Expected earnings from Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), Vistra (VST), Intuit (INTU), Dell (DELL), Autodesk (ADSK), and CoreWeave (CRWV).
February 27: January Producer Price Index (PPI) and core PPI.
March 2: January construction spending, February ISM Manufacturing PMI, and expected earnings from MongoDB (MDB).
March 3: Expected earnings from Autozone (AZO), Target (TGT), Best Buy (BBY), CrowdStrike (CRWD), and Ross Stores (ROST).