Hot PPI and Wobbling Tech Send Stocks Tumbling — Dow Plunges about 715 Points

CNBC, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, Market Watch, CNN, Business Insider, the Wall Street Journal, and Reuters contributed to this report.

Markets hit the eject button on Friday after a surprise burst of wholesale inflation and another rough day for tech. The Dow slid roughly 715 points (−1.5%), the S&P 500 fell about 1.1%, and the Nasdaq lost 1.4% as traders rushed for cover.

The trigger: January’s Producer Price Index came in hotter than economists expected — +0.5% for headline PPI versus a 0.3% forecast. Even worse, core PPI (which strips out food and energy) jumped 0.8%, well above the 0.3% consensus. That’s the kind of print that revives talk the Fed may keep policy tighter for longer, and investors didn’t like the sound of it.

Tech’s bad month kept getting worse. Nvidia extended its post-earnings wobble — down another ~2% on Friday after a surprise drop the day before — and software names were brutal: Salesforce slid over 4%, Microsoft lost around 2%, cybersecurity play Zscaler plunged 11%, and GPU-cloud vendor CoreWeave plunged about 16% on weak guidance. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) is down roughly 10% for February and has given back about 23% year-to-date — a nasty stretch for a sector that’s carried the market for years.

The fallout was broad: financials and other cyclical areas pulled back too amid rising fears that AI disruption and job cuts (Block’s dramatic layoffs this week grabbed headlines) could sap the economy.

“People have been selling first and asking questions later,” said Chris Zaccarelli at Northlight Asset Management — a sentiment that summed up the day.

Volatility spiked: the VIX popped back above 20 (around 21), and market technicians pointed out the S&P 500 slid below its 50-day moving average — a technical red flag that could pressure stocks further if it sticks. UBS even trimmed its US equity stance, warning of dollar risks, stretched valuations and policy turbulence in Washington.

A few other color notes:

• Treasury yields weren’t racing higher like you might expect with hot inflation; the 10-year was trading just under 4%, reflecting a mixed reaction across fixed income and equities.
• The Nasdaq is on track for its worst monthly showing since last March, down more than 3% in February.
• Big macro and policy headlines kept tugging at traders — from the lingering debate over AI-capex sustainability to takeover drama in media stocks — so flows looked defensive and stop-loss hungry.

Friday’s hard PPI read kicked off a classic risk-off move — tech gets hit, indexes drop, volatility rises, and traders retreat to cash and safer pockets. The market now faces a delicate stretch: can better earnings and cooler data quiet nerves, or will sticky inflation and AI angst keep the tape choppy? For now the answer looks like more chop.