MW The stock market is reflecting fears of an AI apocalypse for white-collar jobs
By Joseph Adinolfi and Hannah Pedone
Investors are shooting first and asking questions later as the momentum trade gets swept up by concerns that AI could disrupt established industries like insurance and wealth management
The "AI scare trade" claimed more victims on Thursday, with logistics stocks taking a beating.
Artificial intelligence could replace factory workers. It's already starting to replace some low-level coders. But what about financial advisors and commercial real-estate brokers?
What started as a somewhat academic fear of an AI reckoning for white-collar workers is now starting to seem a little more tangible - at least in the eyes of Wall Street. A specter is haunting the U.S. equity market, as seemingly every day a new AI feature sparks investor panic about fresh sectors that are ripe for disruption.
That's manifested in a widespread selloff that has started to metastasize beyond purveyors of enterprise software offerings. The proximate causes at times seem minor relative to the reactions they've provoked in the market. It may not be that traders really think some lines of code from unknown companies are going to imminently topple existing industries, but rather that people are beginning to see how knowledge-work industries once viewed as relatively immune to the AI threat might end up being a bit more vulnerable than expected.
Jeffrey Favuzza, who works on the equities trading desk at Jefferies, offered a summary of the recent headline-driven hits in a report shared with MarketWatch on Thursday. We have presented a modified version of the table from his report below that offers a helpful breakdown of some of these big moves.
Timeline of AI headline selloffs Date Segment Tickers Average price change on date Reason/headline Sept. 30, 2025 Front-office application software BRZE -11%Reaction to OpenAI products for inbound marketing and contracts Jan. 30, 2026 Gaming APP -16%Reaction to early version of Google's Project Genie, which lets users create virtual worlds Feb. 3, 2026 Legal technology LZ -16%Reaction to legal plugin from Anthropic's Claude Feb. 9, 2026 Insurance brokers AON -10%OpenAI approves first AI insurance app Feb. 10, 2026 Wealth managers LPLA -8%Altruist launches AI tax-planning feature Feb. 11, 2026 Property managers, office REITS BXP -10%Fear of AI taking over white-collar jobs Feb. 12, 2016 Freight logistics CHRW -19%Algorhythm noted it can handle 400% more freight volume without additional staff Source: Jefferies; numbers for Feb. 12 accurate as of midday in New York
This is a solid start, but it is by no means a comprehensive list of all the stocks that have been impacted by what some have taken to calling the "AI scare trade."
The software sector is rife with examples. Only 15 of the 114 stocks included in the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF IGV are trading in the green since the start of 2026, according to FactSet data. The ETF itself is down more than 23% since New Year's Day.
And the pain extends far beyond software. From commercial real-estate players to companies specializing in freight and logistics, no stock seems truly safe.
Shares of asset-management firms heavily involved in private lending, including industry stalwart Blue Owl Capital $(OWL)$, have taken a hit as investors scrutinize those firms' heavy lending to software firms. Shares of MSCI $(MSCI)$ and S&P Global $(SPGI)$ been beaten down by investor worries over the resilience of seemingly lucrative financial-data businesses.
Shares of Duolingo (DUOL), provider of a popular language-learning app, have cratered 80% since they peaked north of $500 in May.
"The glaring theme underneath the surface," according to Favuzza, is that investors are taking a shoot-first, ask-questions-later mentality "for any area of the market that has an AI headline," he said in commentary shared with MarketWatch.
Why now?
To be sure, fears that AI might cause a white-collar-job apocalypse have been percolating for years. So why is the market increasingly freaking out now?
Steve Sosnick, chief market strategist at Interactive Brokers, took a stab at answering that question in commentary shared with MarketWatch on Thursday. The wide-ranging selloff is evidence of a "huge change" in market psychology. The big takeaway? Momentum-driven markets can run both ways.
"The giant reactions are a function of how momentum-driven so many investors and traders have become," Sosnick added in a conversation with MarketWatch.
"For the past three years, investors took a glass-half-full approach to AI. Now, it seems like the focus is on how AI can ruin a business's - or an industry's - profitability," he said.
Despite all the big moves across the U.S. equity market so far in 2026, not much has changed from the perspective of fundamentals, said David Lefkowitz, head of U.S. equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.
"Positioning and other factors seem to be exacerbating a lot of the moves that we're seeing," he told MarketWatch.
Comments from Bespoke Investment Group helped to reinforce the notion. On Thursday, the big AI casualties were companies in the freight and logistics industry.
C.H. Robinson Worldwide $(CHRW)$ shares may have fallen 15% on Thursday, but the company's bonds barely budged. In fact, its biggest issue actually moved higher, a Bespoke team noted.
"That credit analysis suggests that, for now, the AI fears are largely sentiment-based as opposed to a real existential threat," Bespoke said.
What's more, the catalyst for this move looked particularly suspect, the Bespoke team pointed out.
"The catalyst was a report of major AI-driven efficiency advances from a new tool made by Algorhythm Holdings $(RIME)$, a karaoke microcap machine maker turned AI trucking software firm. Yes, we're serious," the Bespoke team said in written commentary.
Jefferies analyst Stephanie Moore took a similar view. "While there are more questions than answers at this time, the somewhat head-scratching specifics of this case leave us ultimately feeling that this looks incredibly oversold," she said in a note.
Morgan Stanley analyst Bob Jian Huang echoed those sentiments in his assessment of the selloff in insurance stocks, which he deemed to be "overdone."
He said that while simpler insurance products, such as "term life, personal auto and home" could see major disruptions from AI in the next five years, larger commercial businesses are unlikely to suffer.
"Higher-valued brokers will use AI to enhance analysis and improve underwriting, not be displaced by it, in our view," he added.
Plenty of babies are being thrown out with the bathwater, it would seem. The opportunities haven't been lost on bargain hunters, most notably in the retail crowd. Individual investors have aggressively bought the dip in the IGV software ETF, according to Vanda Research data. And Jefferies's Moore wrote of a buying opportunity in "high-quality operators" including XPO $(XPO)$, CSX $(CSX)$ and FedEx $(FDX)$.
Jim Angel, a faculty affiliate at the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy at Georgetown University, said in an email that the situation has the feel of a "classic peak in a speculative bubble."
"We've seen this before in the dot-com bubble when the market would slash the price of a dot-com wonder at the first hint it would not meet the market's extreme expectations," said Angel.
He added: "Fear and greed move the markets, and we are seeing both of those in action right now."
-Joseph Adinolfi -Hannah Pedone
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 14, 2026 08:30 ET (13:30 GMT)
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