Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., Feb. 23, 2026.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Stock futures were slightly higher Tuesday after a rough start to the final week of February’s trading.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 140 points, or 0.3%, boosted by a 4% advance on Home Depot after the company posted better-than-expected results. S&P 500 futures rose 0.2%, while Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.3%.
Major averages fell Monday on renewed fears of artificial intelligence disruptions to various industries. President Donald Trump’s threat to hike global tariffs to 15% and tensions between the U.S. and Iran also kept traders on edge.
A global 10% U.S. tariff took effect Tuesday. However, Bloomberg News reported, citing an administration official, that the White House was moving forward with a formal increase to 15%.
The 30-stock Dow on Monday closed lower by more than 800 points, dragged lower by a roughly 13% loss in IBM shares. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite declined 1.1%, while the S&P 500 shed about 1% and slipped into the red for the year.
Software stocks such as Microsoft and CrowdStrike were notable losers during the session, along with cybersecurity stocks and a slate of financial sector names.
“The market has lost momentum. It’s in this trading range … and there’s been a really unhealthy rotation,” Warren Pies, co-founder and strategist at 3Fourteen Research, said Monday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” “So consumer staples, energy up double-digits over the last quarter. You have tech and financials down,”
“I just am of the belief that you have to step back, take down your risk and wait for this range to resolve, and really, in order for it to resolve in a bullish way, it has to be tech-led,” he added. “You cannot get out of this with tech and financials continuing to do this.”
Pies, who downgraded U.S. equities to neutral earlier this month, believes tech stocks will see upside from fundamental strength and increasing productivity. “I think this has been a healthy pullback, a consolidation … still, the wise way to navigate that is to wait and let the market definitively break that range,” he said.
Heading into Tuesday, traders will keep an eye on a key event hosted by artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, the company behind Claude. Anthropic is expected to make new product announcements and demonstrate Claude’s latest features. Anticipation of the event — and the additional disruption it could bring — contributed to declines in the software space on Monday.
