Last week’s SaaS sell-off may have been a dam-bursting moment for the global markets.
Driving the news: Commercial real estate services stocks continued to slide yesterday, as a sell-off spread from North American markets to European ones. Investors are worried about the viability of these companies as AI threatens to render them obsolete through automation.
Analysts speculate some of the fear driving the sell-off also stems from panic that AI-related job disruptions will drive down commercial real estate demand.
Big picture: If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it happened last week with software stocks upon the release of a new Anthropic tool. It’s also been playing out with financial services and data and analytics, two areas also viewed as highly vulnerable to AI disruption.
Last week, a collection of 164 stocks across the software, financial services, and asset management sectors collectively lost $611 billion in market value — yikes.
This week, in addition to real estate stocks, wealth management firms have been particularly hard-hit after Altruist unveiled a new tool that creates tax strategies.
Why it matters: AI scare trades are poised to become the top market trend of 2026. Even as voices of reason continue to caution that total replacement by AI agents for these various industries isn’t imminent, each release this year of a new and advanced tool will trigger more dips.—QH