Eric Criscuolo, market strategist at the New York Stock Exchange, joins J.D. Durkin to break down late-day stabilization in tech, the ongoing selloff in software tied to AI disruption fears, and what earnings and crypto weakness could mean for markets heading into the end of the week.
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J.D.: Let's bring in our good pal Eric Criscuolo, market strategist here at the New York Stock Exchange. You and I were talking five minutes before the close about maybe some of these big tech names that had really been leading losses to the downside, maybe hitting some technical levels, a little bit of a bounce back into the closing auction. What'd you say?
Eric: Yeah, we saw a software kind of hit a hit a trough, hit a bottom, kind of started to get a bid around noon. So buyers started to come in to that, to those names. It certainly didn't push everything into the green, but they kind of stabilized losses. And you know that kind of took the tech sector higher. And that was part of the rally. Why you saw the S&P kind of get back to the 6890 level that we are right now.
J.D.: Yeah. Did you see today as a little bit of the Anthropic hangover story from yesterday? I mean they introduced this new productivity suite and people said, oh, what about clerical administrative work, legal services work. And suddenly all the SaaS software, as a company giants have been absolutely throttled here the last 48 hours.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, software has been under pressure for a while because of that theme. And you saw with that Anthropic news yesterday, it just like everything just exploded and it would just sell everything no matter what. Indiscriminate selling across the whole sector. So that continued today. But then again, you know, buyers kind of stepped in a little bit toward the end of the day, kind of stabilized everything a little bit.
J.D.: Maybe hitting some short term oversold levels. That kind of maybe sets the stage for the last two trading days of the week. But of course, we've also got as if all that weren't enough and general Fed macro noise. How about earnings? We got a big one today. We got Amazon tomorrow after the bell. How have the big tech earnings season gone so far. And what are some of the things, Eric, you'll be paying attention to between now and the end of the week?
Eric: Yeah I mean you're seeing kind of, you know, really high bars that have been set and it's really hard to clear those bars. You know AMD had a good print. They beat numbers. They had good, you know good guidance. But they were down 10-15%. So you know the hurdle rate is exceptionally high. Some of these names have just seen massive moves. They've taken the whole stock market up for three years. You know it wouldn't be surprising if you know after great numbers these stocks you know do come in a little bit you know. So that's that it wouldn't be shocking at all with that.
J.D.: It's really interesting to look at some of the sectors that caught a bit. And there weren't a lot of them, but the oil and energy stocks today did. The homebuilders did so well. But you got some of these falling knives as well. Semiconductors down. You mentioned AMD software names led down by Palantir, Robinhood for the fintech space also down throughout most of the day 10-11% or so.
Eric: Yeah some of the financial services names, the exchanges, especially if you're if you're linked anywhere to crypto, you know, crypto has been absolutely unable to get off the mat, constantly making lower lows. Bitcoin is now kind of at some key levels around, you know, $75,000. So, you know, those are those are kind of numbers that, you know, it hit several, you know, last year or two years ago. So you know, it's trying to hold those levels but there's just there's just nothing going on right now. And so all those names that are linked to crypto, they just can't get going, right?
J.D.: I mean, maybe a key long term support level for Bitcoin right around 70, 72. That's where we were before election day of 2024. Obviously after the election results we saw the crypto majors kind of skyrocket. Now we've fallen so much. We're kind of retesting those before we let you go. Anything else on your radar? A big catalyst you'll be paying attention to in the next few trading sessions here on Wall Street?
Eric: I think really it's just earnings. You know, we're going to have some delayed employment data come out, you know, next week. So that's, you know, an unfortunate byproduct of the shutdown. But luckily that didn't last too long. But I think everyone's just focused on earnings focused on tech earnings right now. And then of course the Super Bowl.
J.D.: Of course the Super Bowl. Do you have a prediction there?
Eric: Uh, I don't make predictions at the New York State.
J.D.: You know, I've seen this before, and that's always your answer. That's a good market strategist right there. I do think Seattle's favorite, though, for whatever that's worth.
Eric: Sounds like a good place. Sounds about right there.
J.D.: The great Eric Criscuolo, market strategist at the New York Stock Exchange. Anything can happen on Super Bowl Sunday, though. Thanks for kicking us off. Nice to have you here.
Eric: Happy to be.