The S&P Erased a 1% Drop, Software Kept Dying, and Palo Alto Just Torched the After-Hours – Market Breakdown #180
The S&P whipsawed to a 0.1% gain, software fell another 2-3%, gold crashed 3%, Meta signed a tens-of-billions Nvidia deal, and Palo Alto cut guidance after the bell.
📊 THE MARKET BREAKDOWN
Satirical daily market intelligence for traders who think in systems, not headlines.
Issue #180 | February 17, 2026
🔥 Headlines & Hysteria (powered by Forked Feed)
Forked Feed says: Remember Friday’s software bounce? Salesforce up 2.6%? Oracle up 2.9%? ServiceNow up 3.7%? Yeah, that lasted exactly zero trading days. Tuesday came and software resumed its freefall with the enthusiasm of a stock that just saw its entire sector’s business model questioned by a chatbot. Salesforce dropped nearly 3%. Oracle fell almost 4%. Autodesk lost nearly 3%. ServiceNow slipped over 1%, bringing its year-to-date decline to 31%. The IGV software ETF lost another 2.2%, and is now 32% below its October highs. Thirty-two percent. That’s a bear market inside a bull market inside an existential crisis. But wait, it gets better. After the close, Palo Alto Networks, the one cybersecurity company that was supposed to be immune from the SaaSpocalypse, reported earnings and promptly cut its full-year EPS guidance from $3.87 to $3.65-$3.70 and guided Q3 earnings to 78-80 cents versus the 92 cents Wall Street expected. The stock immediately dropped 8% in after-hours trading. Palo Alto had beaten earnings for twelve consecutive quarters. It had just closed a $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk and a $3.35 billion purchase of Chronosphere. It was the last software stock standing, the one analysts pointed to as proof that not everything with a SaaS business model was doomed. And then it cut guidance and the after-hours session turned it into a crime scene. JPMorgan says the logic behind the tech selloff is “broken.” BTIG says the sector is “extremely oversold.” Jensen Huang says AI isn’t replacing software. None of it matters. The market has decided that software is guilty until proven innocent, and the verdict comes back worse every single day.
Forked Feed says: After the close, Meta announced a “multiyear, multigenerational strategic partnership” with Nvidia to deploy millions of Blackwell and Rubin GPUs, plus standalone Grace CPUs, across Meta’s hyperscale data centers. The deal is worth “tens of billions of dollars.” One analyst estimated that a million GPUs at $3.5 million per rack works out to approximately $48 billion. Meta is spending $115 to $135 billion on capex in 2026, and a good chunk of that is going directly into Jensen Huang’s pocket. For the first time, Meta will deploy Nvidia’s Grace CPUs as standalone chips rather than alongside GPUs, which means Nvidia is now competing with Intel and AMD on the CPU side of the data center too. Jensen called it “the full NVIDIA platform” being deployed at Meta’s scale. This is objectively one of the largest AI infrastructure deals ever announced. It confirms that the hyperscaler spending boom is real, accelerating, and shows no signs of slowing. It should be bullish for Nvidia ahead of its February 25 earnings. And yet, the after-hours reaction was muted, because the market is currently more interested in which software company AI is going to kill next than in how much money is being spent building the AI that’s going to kill them. The deal also comes as Meta is simultaneously developing its own custom chips and talking to Google about using Tensor Processing Units, because when you’re spending $135 billion on AI infrastructure, apparently one chip supplier isn’t enough. You need all of them. And maybe a backup plan for the backup plan.
Forked Feed says: The S&P 500 opened the post-Presidents’ Day week by immediately dropping nearly 1%. Software was cratering. Tech was red. Bitcoin was sliding below $67,000. Gold was plunging 3%. It looked like the sixth straight losing week was going to start with a bang. Then, somehow, the index clawed back every point and closed up 0.10% at 6,843. The Dow gained 32 points to 49,533. The Nasdaq eked out a 0.14% gain to 22,578. Bloomberg called it “whipsawed.” The market called it Tuesday. The intraday reversal was powered by financial stocks: Citigroup jumped 2.6%, JPMorgan gained over 1%, and banks broadly rallied as investors rotated out of software and into anything with a physical building and actual customers. Norwegian Cruise Line surged 12% after Elliott Investment disclosed a 10%+ stake and launched an activist campaign. Masimo spiked 34% on a $9.9 billion Danaher acquisition at $180 per share. Amazon snapped a nine-day losing streak, up 1.2%, because apparently $200 billion in planned AI spending is fine as long as you stop falling for one day. The equal-weight S&P continues to outperform the cap-weighted version, which means the market is fine if you own everything equally and terrible if you own the stocks that people actually own. Thirty-seven stocks in the S&P 500 hit new 52-week highs today. Walmart is at all-time levels. The market is simultaneously setting records and collapsing depending entirely on whether your stocks have “cloud” or “AI” in their investor presentation.
Forked Feed says: Gold dropped 3% to around $4,900, falling below $5,000 for the first time since it crossed that milestone last month. Silver fell 4.5% to $73.68. This was supposed to be the ultimate safe haven. The one asset that couldn’t be disrupted by AI, devalued by a white paper, or destroyed by a guidance cut. And it just had its worst day in two weeks because the dollar strengthened, Asian liquidity was thin due to Lunar New Year, and apparently even the precious metals market has decided that “safety” is a relative concept in 2026. Gold is still up enormously on the year. JPMorgan still has a $6,300 target. Central banks are still buying. But the last month has been a masterclass in volatility: gold went from $4,400 to $5,100 to $4,860 in the span of three weeks, which is the kind of price action you’d expect from a meme coin, not a 6,000-year-old store of value. Meanwhile, Bitcoin fell below $67,000 in early trading, extending its correlation with the software selloff. CoinDesk noted that BTC and the IGV software ETF are now moving in lockstep, which is the kind of correlation that makes everyone unhappy because it means the “digital gold” thesis and the “uncorrelated asset” thesis are both dead at the same time. Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) fell 5%. Riot, MARA, and CleanSpark all dropped 4-5%. The only things going up today were banks, cruise ships, and pulse oximeter companies being acquired at a 38% premium. Normal market.
Forked Feed says: General Mills, maker of Cheerios, Lucky Charms, and Progresso soup, slashed its fiscal 2026 outlook and the stock crashed 7%, its worst day since the pandemic began in March 2020. The company now expects organic sales to decline 1.5% to 2%, down from a prior forecast of flat to slightly up. Operating profit and adjusted EPS are expected to plunge 16% to 20%, worse than the already grim 10-15% decline it previously guided. The reason? American households are feeling “uneasy.” Not “concerned.” Not “cautious.” Uneasy. Like the nation is collectively lying awake at 3 AM thinking about whether it should have bought the name-brand cereal or the store brand. And honestly? That tracks. Inflation may be cooling at the macro level, but food prices are still elevated, tariff uncertainty persists, and the stock market has been falling for five weeks while AI threatens to replace half the workforce. Of course people are uneasy. The Cheerio Bee is uneasy. Genuine Parts also crashed 12-15% after announcing it would split into two publicly traded companies following pressure from Elliott Investment, because apparently the activist investor playbook in 2026 is: step one, buy 10% of a company. Step two, demand it become two smaller, weaker companies. Step three, watch both stocks underperform. Elliott is doing this simultaneously to Genuine Parts and Norwegian Cruise Line, the latter of which surged 12% on the same activist involvement. So the market rewarded the cruise ship for getting the same treatment it punished the auto parts company for receiving. Consistency has never been Wall Street’s strong suit.
🔎 Today’s Focus: The Whipsaw Recovery That Solved Nothing
The S&P 500 closed up 7 points. It took an intraday roundtrip of nearly 100 points to get there.
Markets reopened after the Presidents’ Day weekend to exactly the kind of session everyone feared: volatile, directionless, and dominated by the same AI disruption narrative that has been grinding the market lower for six weeks. The S&P fell nearly 1% in the morning as software stocks cratered, gold and silver plunged, and Bitcoin slid below $67,000. Then financials caught a bid, a few M&A headlines dropped (Danaher-Masimo, Elliott-Norwegian Cruise), and the index clawed back to close at 6,843, up 0.10%. The Dow finished at 49,533 and the Nasdaq at 22,578.
The surface-level read is stability. The deeper read is exhaustion. The market is running out of sectors to rotate into. Software is in a bear market. Mega-cap tech can’t hold a bounce. Precious metals just had their worst session in two weeks. Bitcoin is correlated with software now. The only things working are banks, industrials, value stocks, and whatever Elliott Investment decides to buy 10% of that morning.
After the bell, the picture got worse. Palo Alto Networks, the last cybersecurity name that hadn’t been dragged into the SaaSpocalypse, cut its full-year EPS guidance and issued Q3 numbers well below consensus. The stock dropped 8% after hours. Applied Digital fell after Nvidia exited its $177 million stake. The one bright spot: Meta’s massive chip deal with Nvidia, confirming that AI infrastructure spending is accelerating at a scale that makes earlier estimates look conservative.
The week’s event calendar hasn’t changed. FOMC minutes land Wednesday. PCE data drops Friday alongside a possible Supreme Court tariff ruling. Walmart reports Thursday. The market has four days to navigate all of this, and it just spent the first one going nowhere after a 100-point round trip.
Forked Feed says: The S&P erased a 1% drop and closed up 7 points. Congratulations. That’s the equivalent of falling off a building, landing on an awning, and declaring it a successful jump. Software lost another 2-3% because Friday’s bounce was a mirage. Palo Alto cut guidance after hours because the SaaSpocalypse has no survivors. Gold crashed 3% because even the safe haven isn’t safe. Bitcoin fell below $67,000 because it’s correlated with software now, which means the asset that was supposed to be uncorrelated with everything has chosen to correlate with the one sector that’s down 32%. General Mills said Americans are “uneasy,” which is the first honest thing a cereal company has said in years. Norwegian Cruise surged 12% because an activist investor bought a bunch of shares, which apparently constitutes a turnaround plan. And after the close, Meta announced it’s buying tens of billions of dollars worth of Nvidia chips, confirming that the AI buildout is real and massive and accelerating, while simultaneously the software companies that are supposed to benefit from AI keep falling like they just learned the technology was designed to replace them. The market made a round trip today. It started scared, ended flat, and is heading into tomorrow with Palo Alto’s guidance cut hanging over every software stock on Earth.
⚡ The Setup
SPY 682.85 | BTC 67,295 | US10Y 4.060 | DXY 97.22
SPY settled at 682.85, putting the S&P at approximately 6,843 after the session’s wild intraday ride. The index tested the 6,780 area during the morning selloff and held, which keeps that January 21 low intact as support. On the upside, 6,900 (SPY 690) remains the ceiling that has rejected every rally attempt this year. The after-hours environment is messy: Palo Alto’s 8% drop will pressure software futures, while the Meta-Nvidia deal provides a counterweight for semis. The net effect may be a flat-to-lower open Wednesday. The key question remains the same: can the S&P hold 6,780 through a week packed with FOMC minutes, PCE, and a possible tariff ruling? The intraday recovery suggests buyers exist near that level, but each test weakens the support.
BTC slid to $67,295, extending its February rout and now down 47% from the October all-time high of $126,210. The correlation with the IGV software ETF has become unmistakable: both are falling in lockstep as the same macro forces (AI disruption fear, risk-off rotation, and institutional de-risking) hammer both assets. Bitcoin briefly touched $66,800 during the session before a modest bounce. The $65,000 level remains the critical floor. Below that, the next meaningful support is $61,000, the early-February low. Bitcoin ETF outflows continue, with IBIT shedding nearly $3 billion in three months. Strategy fell 5%. The crypto market has lost its narrative and is trading as a proxy for risk appetite, which is exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to do.
The 10-year yield ticked up to 4.060% from Friday’s 4.050%, a negligible move that suggests the bond market is waiting for Wednesday’s FOMC minutes before making its next move. The yield spent most of the session range-bound between 4.04% and 4.08%. The bond market’s message hasn’t changed: inflation is cooling, rate cuts are coming, and yields should be supportive for risk assets. The equity market’s message hasn’t changed either: it doesn’t care. The divergence between falling yields and struggling equities remains one of the most notable disconnects of 2026. If the FOMC minutes reveal a more dovish Fed than the January statement suggested, yields could break below 4.00% and force equities to acknowledge the improving macro backdrop.
DXY firmed to 97.22, contributing to the gold and silver selloff as the dollar strengthened on thin holiday-related liquidity across Asia. The dollar remains in its 2026 range of 96.50-97.50 and isn’t telling a clear directional story yet. The Canadian CPI release added some noise, and UK employment data was also in the mix, but neither moved the needle for the DXY. The next real catalyst is Wednesday’s FOMC minutes, which could push the dollar sharply lower if the tone is dovish or stabilize it if the Fed signals patience on cuts. Gold’s 3% drop and silver’s 4.5% crash are more about positioning and liquidity than dollar fundamentals, but a DXY push above 97.50 would put additional pressure on commodities.
🧩 Market Archetype: The Hollow Recovery
The S&P 500 fell nearly 1%, erased the entire decline, and closed up 7 points. On the surface, that looks like resilience. Underneath, it’s hollow. The buying that reversed the selloff came from financials, M&A arbitrage, and sector rotation, not from conviction that the macro picture has improved or that the AI disruption trade has peaked. Software kept falling. Precious metals cratered. Bitcoin dropped below $67,000. And after the bell, Palo Alto’s guidance cut confirmed that the SaaSpocalypse isn’t contained to low-quality names. This is a Hollow Recovery: the index closes green, but the internal mechanics are deteriorating. The rotation is keeping the S&P afloat while the Nasdaq-heavy, growth-heavy, software-heavy constituents that powered the last three years continue to decompress. The danger of a Hollow Recovery is that it creates the illusion of stability while the foundation erodes. The market can rotate into banks and cruise ships and pulse oximeters for only so long before it runs out of places to hide.
💧 Flow Pulse
The rotation story intensified today. Financial stocks were the clear winners: Citigroup surged 2.6%, JPMorgan gained over 1%, and the sector broadly outperformed as investors sought earnings visibility outside of tech. Bank of America’s latest fund manager survey showed Wall Street has taken its most overweight commodities position since May 2022 and has edged cash holdings up to 3.4% of portfolios. The “run it hot” economy thesis is alive among institutions, with the most growth optimism since February 2022.
Software was the clear loser and it wasn’t even close. The IGV software ETF dropped another 2.2%, extending its decline to 32% below October highs. Salesforce, Oracle, ServiceNow, and Autodesk all fell 1-4%. Then Palo Alto’s after-hours guidance cut promised more pain Wednesday morning. The sector has now been in a sustained bear market for over four months and every bounce has been sold within one to two sessions.
Gold’s 3% drop and silver’s 4.5% plunge represent the first meaningful crack in the precious metals trade since the early-February crash. The dollar’s strength and thin Lunar New Year liquidity in Asia were the proxies, but the real story is that gold’s $5,000 level is no longer a floor but a contested battleground. Gold settled near $4,900. Silver fell to $73.68.
Crypto extended its decline, with Bitcoin falling below $67,000 and correlating heavily with software. MSTR, Riot, MARA, and CleanSpark all fell 4-5%. Bitcoin ETF outflows continue to accelerate. The “digital gold” narrative is dead for now; BTC is trading as a tech-adjacent risk asset.
M&A provided isolated sparks: Danaher’s $9.9 billion acquisition of Masimo at a 38% premium sent the target up 34% and showed that deals still get done in a nervous market. Norwegian Cruise’s 12% surge on Elliott’s activist stake proved that corporate catalysts can override macro fear. But these are stock-specific stories, not market-moving flows.
Forked Feed says: The flows are telling a very simple story: anything that touches software, AI disruption, or “growth at any price” is being sold. Anything that touches physical assets, cash flow, dividends, or activist investors is being bought. The market has split into two economies. In Economy A, banks are rallying, Walmart is at all-time highs, cruise lines are surging on activist plays, and a pulse oximeter company just got a 38% premium buyout. In Economy B, software is down 32%, Palo Alto just cut guidance, gold crashed 3%, silver crashed 4.5%, and Bitcoin is correlated with the worst-performing sector in the market. If you’re in Economy A, you’re having a great year. If you’re in Economy B, you’re having the worst year since the Fed decided inflation was transitory. The problem is that Economy B contains the companies that represent the largest weightings in every major index, which is why the S&P is flat on the year while 37 stocks inside it hit 52-week highs today. The market is a tale of two cities. One city is burning. The other city is pretending it can’t smell the smoke.
🔮 Forked Forecast
Bull Case (20%): The Meta-Nvidia deal dominates Wednesday’s narrative and overshadows Palo Alto’s guidance cut. Investors interpret the tens-of-billions commitment as proof that AI infrastructure demand is accelerating, which lifts semis and spills over into a broader risk-on move. The FOMC minutes reveal a dovish Fed ready to cut sooner than the January statement implied. SPY reclaims 688 and the S&P pushes toward 6,900. Software stabilizes as bargain hunters step in. Bitcoin bounces back above $68K. The Nasdaq snaps its losing streak. Gold finds a floor near $4,900.
Base Case (55%): Palo Alto’s after-hours guidance cut weighs on software Wednesday morning, but the damage stays contained to the sector. The broader market chops sideways as investors wait for the FOMC minutes (Wednesday afternoon) and PCE data (Friday). The Meta-Nvidia deal is acknowledged but doesn’t move the index. Software drifts lower but doesn’t crash. Financials and industrials hold their gains. The S&P trades 6,800-6,870 (SPY 680-687). Bitcoin holds $65-68K. Gold stabilizes near $4,900. The VIX stays elevated around 20-22. Nothing resolves, but nothing breaks.
Bear Case (25%): Palo Alto’s guidance cut triggers a cascading selloff in cybersecurity and enterprise software Wednesday morning, proving that the SaaSpocalypse has no safe harbor. CrowdStrike, Fortinet, and Zscaler get dragged down in sympathy. The FOMC minutes reveal hawkish dissent or concern about financial conditions, pushing rate cut expectations further out. The S&P breaks the 6,780 support that held during today’s intraday selloff, opening the door to 6,700. Bitcoin falls through $65,000. The VIX pushes above 23. Gold continues its slide toward $4,800 as the dollar strengthens. The market enters Thursday’s Walmart earnings in full defensive mode, and every sector rotation trade starts looking crowded.
Triggers to Watch:Palo Alto aftershock: how far does the guidance cut ripple through cybersecurity and software Wednesday morning?
FOMC minutes (Wednesday 2 PM ET): dovish tone = relief rally. Hawkish surprise = another leg down
Meta-Nvidia deal reaction: does the market reward AI infrastructure, or shrug because it’s already priced in?
S&P 6,780: today’s intraday low tested this level. A break opens 6,700
Bitcoin $65,000: the floor separating “consolidation” from “bear market” is getting closer
Gold $4,900: does the precious metals trade stabilize, or does the dollar-driven selloff continue?
Nvidia February 25 earnings: the Meta deal raises the stakes for next week’s most important report
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💬 Final Thought
The market went on a round trip today and came back with nothing to show for it.
Down 1% in the morning. Flat by the close. Then Palo Alto cut guidance after the bell and the whole software sector got another reason to not sleep tonight. The S&P closed at 6,843, which is almost exactly where it closed Friday, which is almost exactly where it was two weeks ago, which is almost exactly where it was a month ago. The index is stuck. Trapped between 6,780 support and 6,900 resistance, unable to break out because software and mega-cap tech keep falling, and unable to break down because banks, industrials, and value stocks keep catching bids.
The two-economy market is becoming harder to ignore. Walmart is at all-time highs. Citigroup rallied 2.6%. Norwegian Cruise surged 12% on an activist play. Masimo jumped 34% on a buyout. Thirty-seven S&P 500 stocks hit 52-week highs today. And simultaneously, the IGV software ETF fell another 2.2%, Palo Alto cut its forecast after twelve straight earnings beats, gold crashed 3%, silver dropped 4.5%, and Bitcoin fell below $67,000 in correlation with the software sector it was supposed to be uncorrelated with.
After the close, Meta announced it’s spending tens of billions on Nvidia chips. Millions of GPUs. Blackwell. Rubin. Grace CPUs. The full platform. It’s the largest AI infrastructure commitment in history and it came on the same day that the software sector fell for the sixth time in seven sessions. The money going into building AI is staggering. The money coming out of the companies AI is supposed to help is equally staggering. The market hasn’t figured out how both can be true at the same time, and until it does, the S&P stays stuck.
Tomorrow brings the FOMC minutes and whatever Palo Alto’s guidance cut does to the software tape at the open. Friday brings PCE and the Supreme Court’s next shot at ruling on tariffs. Somewhere between those two days, the market has to decide whether it believes in the AI buildout or fears the AI disruption, because right now it’s doing both, and the result is a perfectly flat index that’s violently rotating underneath.
The market went on a hundred-point journey today and ended up right where it started. Sometimes the destination is the same as the departure. The trip is the punishment.
That’s all for issue #180. The S&P whipsawed nearly 100 points before closing up 7 at 6,843. Software fell another 2-3% because Friday’s bounce was a one-day vacation from reality. Palo Alto Networks cut its full-year guidance after the bell and dropped 8%, proving the SaaSpocalypse has no immunity clause. Meta signed a tens-of-billions deal with Nvidia for millions of GPUs, the largest AI infrastructure commitment ever, and the market barely noticed because it was too busy selling everything that AI is supposed to improve. Gold crashed 3% below $5,000. Silver plunged 4.5%. Bitcoin fell below $67,000 in lockstep with the software selloff it was supposed to be diversifying against. General Mills said Americans are “uneasy,” which is the most relatable thing a cereal company has ever said. Norwegian Cruise surged 12% because Elliott bought a bunch of shares. Masimo jumped 34% because Danaher is paying $180 per share for a pulse oximeter company, which is $50 more than what Palo Alto Networks costs right now. Thirty-seven stocks hit 52-week highs on a day the software sector hit 52-week lows. The market is two markets. One of them is having the time of its life. The other one is having the time of its life too, just not the kind anyone would choose.
-- Forked Feed
Forked Feed is a satirical financial newsletter and should not be construed as investment advice. We're just here to point out the absurdity. Past performance of our snark does not guarantee future sarcasm.
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