TQ Morning Briefing

Workday beat on EPS, beat on revenue, grew subscriptions 15.7%, and dropped 10% after hours. The miss was $15 million of guidance. That is the fourth software name this month to post clean numbers and get sold on what comes next. At 4:20 PM today, Nvidia reports into that same market. It carries $66 billion in expected revenue and the market’s biggest open question: is AI spending compounding, or peaking?

MARKET STATE

Tuesday's Bounce Had a Ceiling, and It Was Made of Software.

The S&P gained 0.77% to 6,890 on Tuesday, clawing back three quarters of Monday's selloff. The Dow added 370 points. The Nasdaq rose 1.04%. All three finished well off session highs.

AMD was the day's anchor, jumping 8.8% after Meta announced a deal to deploy up to 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs for AI data centers. That deal confirmed two things. Hyperscaler spending is picking up speed. And AMD now has a seat at the table that matters.

The session told a clear story about what the market trusts and what it does not. The S&P pushed to its highs by late morning on the AMD news. Then it spent four hours fading as software names gave back early gains into the close. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) added 1.9% but is still down more than 25% on the year. Buyers showed up for hardware. Software bounced, but didn’t stick.

The 10-year yield held near 4.05%, a three-month low, as funds kept rotating into Treasuries. Gold pulled back from $5,230 to $5,158. Bitcoin slid below $63,000, on pace for its worst month since the FTX collapse in 2022. The dollar index held near 97.75.

Then after the bell, Workday dropped 10% on a $15 million guidance miss. The market is not pricing software earnings. It is pricing durability.

Trade Implication: 

If Nvidia guides above $72 billion for Q1, chip names extend and the AI capex story firms. If it guides in line or below, software's relief rally reverses and the flight to Treasuries and gold resumes.

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WHAT ACTUALLY MOVED MARKETS

Tariffs Lost Tuesday's Session, but AI Fear Won It.

The tariff shift is ongoing but not driving flows. Trump's 10% Section 122 tariff took effect at midnight Tuesday. The EU put off its trade deal vote, calling the new duties likely illegal. Japan pushed back. Equities mostly shrugged. The effective tariff rate under Section 122 is roughly the same as the old IEEPA rate, per Citi. The real question is whether Trump raises it to 15%. The State of the Union gave rhetoric but no new policy. Trump called the Supreme Court ruling "unfortunate" and claimed tariffs would replace income tax.

AI fear is the active driver, and it cuts both ways. Monday's selloff came from Citrini Research's paper arguing AI could displace large parts of white-collar work. IBM dropped 13%. CrowdStrike fell nearly 10%. On Tuesday, Anthropic's product event landed softer than feared. Its tools were framed as helpers, not replacements, and the relief was fast. DocuSign and Salesforce each gained about 4%. But the whipsaw shows the real risk. The market is one report or product launch away from moving whole sectors meaningfully.. That fragility does not disappear with a single beat.

The Fed is watching AI job losses with growing concern. Governor Lisa Cook said Tuesday that AI-caused layoffs may not respond to rate cuts. Governor Waller called the outlook a "coin flip" between cuts and holding. The market prices just a 5% chance of a March cut.

Execution Bias: 

The market's real test is not tariffs. It is whether Nvidia's guide tonight backs AI capex at current levels. If it does, the shift from software to hardware accelerates. If not, the AI complex compresses.

TAPE & FLOW

Hardware Led Tuesday. Financials Could Not Follow.

The AMD-Meta deal drove chip leadership. AMD gained 8.8%. Nvidia added 0.68% in cautious pre-report trading. The Philly Semiconductor Index beat the broader Nasdaq for the fourth day in five. The hardware side of AI has a buyer. The software side has a question mark.

Software bounced but did not reclaim. Salesforce gained 4%, ServiceNow 2%, DocuSign 4%. None reached last week's levels. The sector is still looking for a floor. Workday's after-hours miss could erase Tuesday's bounce at the open today.

Financials remain the unresolved pressure point. AmEx, JPMorgan, and the broader XLF lost 1.3% on Monday and barely recovered Tuesday. The Citrini thesis is sticking because the logic is simple. If AI cuts white-collar jobs, card spending falls. Issuers price that first.

Home Depot beat and gained nearly 2%, showing that housing-tied spending is holding. But the forward view was cautious. Management called the housing market tepid.

Execution Bias: Watch Workday in the pre-market as a lead signal for all of software. If it holds above $125, the IGV rally has room. If it drops toward $120, names face another down leg before Salesforce and Snowflake report after the close.

POWER & POLICY

The Tariff Framework Has a Shelf Life the Market Has Not Priced.

The Supreme Court struck down IEEPA tariffs on Friday. Trump imposed Section 122 tariffs the same day. He raised them to 15% on Saturday via Truth Social. The 10% rate took legal effect Tuesday. The formal 15% order is still in process.

Here is what matters. Section 122 tariffs expire after 150 days. That puts the deadline in mid-July. After that, Congress must approve them or they lapse. The White House says it will add Section 232 and 301 probes, but those take months. The tariff regime has a legal expiry, and the mid-July deadline is not fully reflected in positioning. 

The EU putting off its trade deal vote is bigger than the headline suggests. If Brussels decides the Section 122 tariffs break the deal, retaliation follows. That runs through European auto tariffs, farm levies, and tech rules. All of those hit specific US names.

Fed Governor Waller's "coin flip" line deserves focus. He said that if the strong January jobs print gets revised lower, the math shifts toward cuts. The February jobs report on March 7 is now a key date.

Investor Signal: 

Farm names with EU export risk (ADM, BG, Deere) trade as if the tariff regime is fixed. If Section 122 expires or the EU hits back, these names reprice first. Watch mid-July as a structural trigger.

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ONE LEVEL DEEPER

Workday's $15 Million Miss Is a Template, Not an Accident.

Workday posted a clean quarter. Revenue up 14.5%. Subscriptions up 15.7%. Non-GAAP EPS of $2.47 crushed the $2.30 call. Margins grew to 30.6%.

The stock dropped 10% because Q1 subscription guidance came in at $2.335 billion, not $2.35 billion. That $15 million gap is immaterial in isolation for a $9.5 billion business. But the market is not pricing the gap. It is pricing the signal. Every software name this quarter faces the same test. Does your growth rate already factor in the risk that an AI agent does your job cheaper?

Workday co-founder Aneel Bhusri took over as CEO two weeks ago. On the call, he pushed back on the AI threat, saying he does not see HR and ERP being replaced. The stock's drop says the market is not buying that right now.

Workday trades at $129, down 39% year to date, sitting 42% below its 200-day moving average. This is not just multiple compression. It is a reassessment of forward durability. And the template is set for every software name reporting this week. Beat the quarter. Miss the guide. Watch the stock break.

Edge Setup: 

If Salesforce and Snowflake both guide light tonight, IGV breaks below its year-to-date low. The shift into hardware (SMH) and Treasuries (TLT) extends into next week. If they guide in line or above, the sector has its first real floor since January.

MARKET CALENDAR

  • Economic Data: MBA 30-Year Mortgage Rate

  • Fed Speakers: Barkin, Musalem

  • Earnings Before Open: Lowe's (LOW), TJX Companies (TJX) 

  • Earnings After Close: Nvidia (NVDA), Salesforce (CRM), Agilent (A), Synopsys (SNPS) 

  • Overnight: Nikkei +2.20%, Hang Seng +0.72%, FTSE 100 +0.93%, DAX +0.37%

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THE CLOSE

The market rallied Tuesday because Anthropic did not destroy software, AMD got a deal from Meta, and Home Depot showed that people still fix their kitchens. Workday's after-hours drop showed what that bounce was built on. Clean numbers still get punished if the forward story holds any AI doubt.

Now the day comes down to one window. Nvidia reports at 4:20 PM. The Street expects $65.7 billion in revenue and $1.53 in EPS. Both are widely expected to be beaten. The beat is not the event. The guide is. If Huang guides Q1 above $72 billion and reinforces supply constraints, hardware firms lead and the S&P can test 6,950. If the guide falls short meaningfully, AI-linked sectors face renewed pressure by morning. 

Nvidia does not report alone. Salesforce and Snowflake print in the same hour. Three names. Three reads on whether AI spending builds value or burns it. By 5 PM, the market will know what it does not know now.

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