What we’re reading (2/5)
“The Week Anthropic Tanked The Market And Pulled Ahead Of Its Rivals” (Wall Street Journal). “Anthropic once appeared as an also-ran in the chaotic race for AI supremacy. This week, the sophistication of the startup’s products upended the stock market. A simple set of industry-specific add-ons to its Claude product, including one that performed legal services, triggered a dayslong global stock selloff, from software to legal services, financial data and real estate. Then, Anthropic unveiled Super Bowl ads that taunt rival OpenAI.”
“Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq Futures Plummet As Amazon’s Earnings Flop Set To Deepen Tech Rout” (Yahoo! Finance). “The overnight moves followed a sharp sell-off during Thursday’s regular session, led once again by technology stocks. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) have now slipped into negative territory for 2026. And after the bell, Amazon (AMZN) added to the gloom. Shares plunged over 10% in after-hours trading after the company posted earnings per share that missed Wall Street estimates and projected capital expenditures of $200 billion for the year, raising concerns about the extent of AI spend.”
“Should AI Chatbots Have Ads? Anthropic Says No.” (ars technica). “‘There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them,’ Anthropic wrote in a blog post. The company argued that including ads in AI conversations would be ‘incompatible’ with what it wants Claude to be: ‘a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking.’”
“Why International Stocks May Win Gold Again In 2026” (Morningstar). “To valuation-driven investors, international stocks’ outperformance is about ‘reversion to the mean.’ While the US market is undeniably home to some phenomenal companies, its success has also owed to ‘margin expansion,’ or price appreciation out of proportion to fundamentals. By contrast, stocks outside the US came into 2025 cheap, whether because of elections in Latin America, Chinese property market woes, or Europe’s stagnant economy. It’s no coincidence that India, one of the most disappointing global markets in 2025, enjoyed several strong years prior.”
“He’s Wall Street’s Biggest Showman. Should You Trust Him?” (Barron’s). “Combined with his famously optimistic views on the sector and frequent media appearances, Ives has gone mainstream as Wall Street’s highest-profile stock analyst, boosted by his prolific feed on X, where he has more than 230,000 followers. Ives’ growing set of overlapping business interests—and the potential impact on his research—are less well known. Ives’ extracurricular roles—with digital-assets firm Eightco Holdings and marketing-tech provider Zeta Global Holding —and his connection to Wedbush’s AI stock fund aren’t regularly disclosed in research reports. The bio atop his X feed notes some of the roles, but individual posts —where he regularly talks up the ‘AI revolution’—often lack context. The details are missing at a moment when investors are scrambling to distinguish hype from reality.”
