Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange on February 18, 2026.
NYSE
U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday, boosted by gains in Advanced microdevices and software stocks, as investor fears about artificial intelligence disrupting certain industries eased.
He S&P 500 advanced 0.77% to close at 6,890.07, while the Nasdaq Composite It rose 1.04% and stood at 22,863.68. He Dow Jones Industrial Average It added 370.44 points, or 0.76%, and ended at 49,174.50. The 30-stock index was supported by a nearly 2% rise in house deposit shares after the company’s earnings beat expectations for the first time in a year. IBM Stocks, which fell the previous day as a result of the aforementioned fears about AI, also contributed to the Dow’s gains.
AMD shares rose 8.8% after Metaplatforms announced a multi-year agreement with the semiconductor company. The new partnership involves deploying up to 6 gigawatts of AMD graphics processing units for AI data centers. Meta will also invest in AMD through a performance-based guarantee of up to 160 million shares of the chipmaker.
The move comes a week after Meta said it is using millions of Nvidia chips in building your data center. Shares of the AI chip favorite rose 0.7%.
document signing was also a winner, rising more than 2% after Anthropic said its Claude Cowork can now connect to Docusign, as well as organizations’ other existing tools, such as Google Drive and Gmail. The move offered some optimism to investors that AI could complement software companies rather than take their place.
That spilled over into other areas of the software space. Actions of sales force – who has also been working with Anthropic – and Service now they increased by 4% and more than 1%, respectively. He iShares Expanded Technology Software Sector ETF (IGV) rose about 2%, although it still remains more than 30% below its 52-week high.
“It seemed to me that the market itself had a sell first, ask questions later mentality. It has been for some time, and that’s why we saw even some of the enterprise software guys take a pretty big hit,” Anshul Sharma, chief investment officer at Savvy Wealth, told CNBC. He added that the day’s moves are “a classic relief rally after that sale.”
Sharma also said he’s not entirely convinced by the narrative that’s been circulating recently on Wall Street that AI will immediately replace a lot of enterprise software.
“It’s incredibly risky from a liability perspective for very large companies to say, ‘Okay, now we’re going to move away from enterprise software, which is tried and true, which has been tested and which aligns with our risk parameters, and then we’ll build it internally, and all of this will happen in the next few months, the next two quarters,'” he said. “The software reduction was a very immediate reaction.”
The major averages fell on Monday on renewed concerns about AI disruption. President Donald Trump’s threat to raise global tariffs to 15% and tensions between the United States and Iran also kept traders nervous. A 10% global US tariff went into effect on Tuesday.