Daily Market Report – February 3, 2026

Market report from February 3, 2026, around 1:00 PM ET

The nomination of Kevin Warsh by Donald Trump has triggered significant fluctuations within just a few days. Jerome Powell's term ends in mid-May, and market participants are trying to assess whether and how the Fed's communication, the course of its balance sheet, and thus the long end of the yield curve will change. In the last FOMC decision on January 28, 2026, the interest rate range was left unchanged at 3.50–3.75%; the next regular meeting is scheduled for March 17–18, 2026. Rick Rieger, head of Fixed Income at Blackrock, noted today in a conference call that it is remarkable how quickly market participants have priced in fewer rate cuts. Warsh is not a hawk. However, he will improve the structures, personnel, and communication of the Fed as Fed Chair. For example, the Fed's "Dot Plot" reports need to be adjusted.

European information providers were particularly hard hit today after Anthropic introduced new tools around "Claude" aimed at automating routine tasks in legal and analytical processes more comprehensively. Pricing power and margins in subscription/license models could erode faster than previously thought: RELX REL, Wolters Kluwer AMS:WKL, London Stock Exchange Group LSEG, and Experian EXPN experienced temporary double-digit declines; SAP XETR:SAP also fell significantly.

Samsung Electronics KRX:005930 rose by about 11%, and SK hynix KRX:000660 gained over 9%. The trigger was a strong counter-reaction following the previous day's decline ("Warsh shock") – and the return of the theme that has supported both stocks for months: a structurally tight market for memory chips due to high demand from data centers.

In the U.S., the downward trend in software and platform stocks continued: the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell as investors reassessed the earnings forecasts of many providers. Microsoft NASDAQ:MSFT and Intuit NASDAQ:INTU were particularly under pressure with significant declines; Adobe NASDAQ:ADBE, Datadog NASDAQ:DDOG, Snowflake NYSE:SNOW, and Accenture NYSE:ACN also lost significantly. The trigger was less a single quarterly report than the concern that new AI tools could replace entire product categories – the large tech stocks pulled the indices down significantly.