TechFlow news — On February 28, according to Jinshi News, U.S. stocks plunged sharply again on Thursday, with the S&P 500 closing down 1.59%, the Nasdaq Composite down 2.78%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.45%. The so-called "Magnificent Seven" tech giants all fell collectively, shedding nearly $550 billion in market value. Notably, Nvidia reversed from an intraday gain of 2% to close down over 8%, losing more than $270 billion in market value in a single day.
Morgan Stanley's Quantitative & Derivatives Strategy team warned that the S&P 500 has broken below the key mid-term CTA (Commodity Trading Advisor) liquidation trigger level of 5887 (closed at 5861.57 on Thursday). They expect macro systematic strategies to sell over $40 billion worth of equities in the coming week, mostly driven by CTAs, as triggers in U.S. equity futures begin flipping. Estimated sales are at least $12.6 billion over the next week and $58 billion over the next month.
Market sentiment has deteriorated sharply. The latest survey from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) shows investor sentiment has turned extremely bearish. In the week ending Wednesday, expectations for stock prices to decline over the next six months surged more than 20 percentage points to nearly 61%. According to JPMorgan data, retail investors sold $1.1 billion worth of stocks in the first two hours of trading on Monday—the largest single-day outflow since March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.
Analysts point out that concerns over slowing growth and trade uncertainty triggered by Trump-related policies are weighing heavily on equities, undermining the momentum trades that previously drove market gains. The S&P 500 is now down 0.3% year-to-date in 2025; a further drop of 1.4% would erase all gains accumulated since Trump’s election victory.
