All three major New York stock indexes closed lower on fatigue over tariff policies from the Donald Trump U.S. administration and fears about artificial intelligence (AI).
On the 23rd (U.S. Eastern time) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 821.91 points, or 1.66%, to close at 48,804.06. The Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 dropped 71.76 points, or 1.04%, to 6,837.75, and the Nasdaq composite lost 258.80 points, or 1.13%, to 22,627.27.
Tariff uncertainty sparked by the Trump administration weighed on stocks. President Trump over the weekend raised global tariffs to 15%. Through Truth Social, he also threatened, "If any country tries to play games with this ridiculous Supreme Court ruling, it will face tariffs higher than those we just agreed to recently, and even stronger measures than that."
However, the European Union (EU) decided that day to put on hold European Parliament ratification of a trade agreement reached with the United States, suggesting that conflicts over tariffs between the United States and major trading partners will persist.
Concerns that advances in AI technology could deliver structural shocks across a wide range of industries, including software, finance, and logistics, also spread through the market. As worries rise that Anthropic's AI tool "Claude" could disrupt the software sector, cybersecurity stocks and IBM were hit on the day.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike plunged 10%, and Zscaler tumbled 10.31%. Netskope fell 12.06%, SailPoint dropped 9.37%, and Okta also slumped more than 6%. IBM sank 13% after Anthropic said "Claude Code can automate tasks such as structural analysis and documentation of COBOL code, the computer language used by IBM systems."
Among tech corporations with a market capitalization of $1 trillion or more, only Nvidia and Apple rose. Companies with a relatively smaller software share and hardware as their main revenue source appeared to hold up amid AI fears.