S&P 500 surges more than 1% Friday to end stormy February as investors look past Trump-Zelenskyy clash

Stocks managed to rise Friday to wrap up a volatile week and a losing month for the major averages.

Friday’s trading session saw a brief pullback after President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy clashed in the Oval Office, which raised concerns about heightened geopolitical risks.

The S&P 500 added 1.59% on Friday to close at 5,954.50. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 601.41 points, or 1.39%, closing at 43,840.91. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.63% to settle at 18,847.28.

Stocks rallied sharply into Friday’s close. Part of that could have been related to index rebalancing and other technical-buying sources. There was a heavy imbalance to the buy side of market-on-close orders at the New York Stock Exchange.

Month to date, the Nasdaq led the way down, sliding nearly 4% in February due largely to a 3.5% drop this week. This was the tech-heavy index’s worst month since April 2024.

The S&P 500 declined roughly 1% for the week and 1.4% in February. Meanwhile, the Dow has managed to outperform, rising about 1% in the week. Month to date, however, the 30-stock index has dropped 1.6%.

The major benchmarks turned negative for a short period on Friday after Trump, along with Vice President JD Vance, argued with Zelenskyy during an extraordinary moment in front of the media at the White House. The leaders met Friday regarding a possible Ukraine mineral rights deal for the U.S., which investors hoped would be a precursor to eventually bringing about an end to the war with Russia.

“You either make a deal or we’re out,” said Trump at one point to Zelenskyy. “You’re gambling with World War III.”

Trump then posted on Truth Social that Zelenskyy “is not ready for peace if America is involved.”

“He can come back when he is ready for peace,” added the president, who promised a quick end to the Russia-Ukraine war during his campaign.

The Cboe Volatility Index, a gauge of fear on Wall Street, spiked as the leaders traded barbs. The index jumped to 22.40 at one point, its highest level since Jan. 27.

“I’m disturbed by what I just saw,” said investor Jim Lebenthal of Cerity Partners on CNBC’s “Halftime Report.” “If the policies in foreign affairs are now to empower Russia and Vladimir Putin, I don’t think that’s good for the stock market. I don’t think that’s good for the global economy. I find it hard to make a case otherwise,” Lebenthal added.

Larry Tentarelli, founder and CEO of the Blue Chip Daily Trend Report, added that “This is still a very news-driven market and any hints of escalation, or no resolution with Russia [and] Ukraine, should be expected to add to volatility, in an already volatile week.”

“From a markets perspectives, I would expect these higher volatility newsbytes at any time, until resolved,” Tentarelli said.

Investors have also been rattled in recent days by Trump’s promise of tariffs, along with recent economic reports flashing warning signs. A decline of 8.5% in megacap tech titan Nvidia in Thursday’s session following its quarterly earnings report threw more cold water on investor sentiment.

On Friday, the Atlanta Fed’s GDP Now measure, which tracks economic data in real time and adjusts continuously, adjusted to forecast first-quarter output falling 1.5%.

Stocks close higher Friday

U.S. stocks finished Friday’s trading session in the green.

The S&P 500 advanced 1.59%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 601.41 points, or 1.39%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 1.63%.

— Hakyung Kim

Small caps underperform in February

Small-cap stocks are lagging behind the S&P 500.

The benchmark Russell 2000 Index is down 4.6% for the week and more than 5% in February. The small-cap index’s losses are more than double that of the S&P 500’s for the week and month.

— Hakyung Kim

Fear gauge VIX hits highest level since Jan. 27

The Cboe Volatility Index, known as the VIX, rose more than 1 point to 22.40 Friday, hitting its highest level since Jan. 27. The VIX looks at prices of options on the S&P 500 to track the level of fear on Wall Street.

— Yun Li

Tesla heads for worst week since 2022

Tesla shares are on track to notch their worst week in more than two years, the latest milestone in the stock’s recent slump.

The stock has tumbled around 16% this week. If that holds through Friday’s closing bell, it would mark the electric vehicle maker’s biggest weekly loss since December 2022.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has remained a focus of the nation’s attention this week as he attended President Trump’s first Cabinet meeting. Trump tapped Musk to lead a controversial government efficiency initiative.

With this week’s drop, the stock is down nearly 30% in 2025.

— Alex Harring

Tech leads market pullback

Information technology has tumbled 6% week to date, making it the S&P 500’s worst-performing sector for the period. Nvidia has shed around 10.9%, while Palantir Technologies has plummeted nearly 19%.

Communication services and consumer discretionary also struggled, losing 4% and 3.9% each.

Meanwhile, financials outperformed, managing to rise 1.3% during the week.

— Hakyung Kim

Euro falls to 16-day low against dollar

The euro weakened 0.3% against the dollar at 1.0363, its lowest level in 16 days. The pullback came after President Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy clashed in the Oval Office.

— Hakyung Kim

Berkshire Hathaway shares hit another record high

Berkshire Hathaway shares hit another record during Friday’s trading, riding high on a stellar earnings report.

The Warren Buffett-led conglomerate’s A shares climbed 0.6% to reach an all-time intraday high of $767,000 apiece Friday, while Class B shares also hit a peak of $511.49. Year to date, the stock has rallied more than 11% in 2025, significantly outperforming the S&P 500, which has turned red on the year.

Over the weekend, Berkshire said its operating profit, which encompasses earnings from the company’s wholly owned businesses, skyrocketed 71% to $14.527 billion in the fourth quarter. That was led by a 302% jump in insurance underwriting from the year-earlier period to $3.409 billion.

— Yun Li

Solar stocks get burned

Solar energy stocks are feeling the heat.

Enphase Energy, which is down around 4.8% Friday, is trading at lows not seen since July 2020 as it paces for its worst week since November 2024. Meanwhile, First Solar is trading at lows not seen since November 2023 as it paces for its worst month since October 2024. On Friday, shares fell 2.8%.

Solar stocks have gotten burned since President Trump won the election in 2024. Enphase Energy and First Solar have plunged 35.2% and 36.4%, respectively, during the period.

— Hakyung Kim, Adrian van Hauwermeiren

Be ‘patient’ with Nvidia, Fidelity portfolio manager says

Shares of Nvidia are up more than 1% in midday trading and are on track to end up February higher after a volatile month.

Still, modest gains are not what investors have grown accustomed to from Nvidia. But Fidelity portfolio manager Adam Benjamin said on “Squawk on the Street” that it is still “really early” in the AI trend and the long-term story is still playing out.

“You’re just going to continue to see this march forward. And so I just think people need to be patient,” Benjamin said.

Benjamin pointed to the GTC developers conference in March as a potential catalyst for Nvidia’s stock.

One of the funds Benjamin runs is the Fidelity Select Technology Portfolio (FSPTX), which had 20% of its assets in Nvidia as of Jan. 31.

— Jesse Pound

Nvidia rebounds Friday

Shares of Nvidia rose 1.4% Friday, pushing the chipmaker back into the $3 trillion market cap club.

Friday’s gains come after the stock fell more than 8% Thursday following Nvidia’s fourth-quarter earnings release.

Despite this week’s 8% slump, Nvidia is still the second-most valuable U.S. tech company, behind Apple and ahead of Microsoft, one of its biggest customers.

— Hakyung Kim, Samantha Subin, Kif Leswing

Palantir headed toward worst week since 2021

With Palantir down more than 1% Friday, the stock is on pace for its seventh negative trading session out of the last eight.

The software company is down 17.1% week to date. This marks Palantir’s worst weekly performance since the week ending Feb. 26, 2021, when it fell 17.6%, its worst week on record.

If the weekly losses hold, this would be the first back-to-back double-digit weekly loss for Palantir since August 2022. Shares are now trading more than 30% below their 52-week high.

— Hakyung Kim, Nicholas Wells

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF on track for its worst month since September 2023

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH), which tracks 25 of the biggest chipmakers in the country, is raking in losses as the chips trade continues to suffer after Nvidia‘s latest earnings report.

SMH is down 8.6% this week, putting the semiconductor index on track for its worst week since Sept. 6, when SMH fell 11.69%. The index is down about 6.2% this month, putting it on pace for the worst month since September 2023 when it fell 7.19%. The index has not had a negative year since 2022.

Dragging SMH this month are losses in companies such as Nvidia, Skyworks Solutions, Marvell Technology, Cadence Design and Advanced Micro Devices.

— Pia Singh

Bank of America downgrades Logitech International, warns of potential tariff effects

Logitech International‘s growth prospects are dimming and investors should look elsewhere, according to Bank of America.

Analyst Didier Scemama downgraded the computer products company to underperform from neutral, lowering growth projections for several product segments. The firm now projects overall revenue will grow just 3.1% in the 2026 fiscal year, down from an estimated 6.7% growth rate in the current year.

“While we raise our FY25-27E revenue growth assumptions for the margin-rich Video Collaboration division (reflective of stronger Enterprise spending and a solid product pipeline), we are somewhat more cautious on PC, Tablet and Gaming Peripherals, for which we have cut our estimates across the board,” Scemama wrote.

The prospect of higher tariffs on Logitech’s products could also weigh on growth, Scemama added.

Logitech makes computer accessories such as mice, keyboards and webcams. Shares of the company fell more than 4% Friday.

— Jesse Pound

S&P 500 opens little changed Friday

The S&P 500 kicked off Friday’s trading session near the flatline.

The broad market index inched down 0.1%. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 100 points, or 0.2%. The Nasdaq Composite lagged, falling around 0.7%.

— Hakyung Kim

Bitcoin heads for its worst week since 2022 FTX collapse

A weeklong rout in bitcoin worsened Friday, with the cryptocurrency falling as low as $78,226.23 overnight, another three-month low.

The blue-chip coin is down more than 14% for the week and on pace for its worst week since November 2022, which was around the time of the FTX collapse. It is also heading for its worst month since June 2022.

Exchange-traded funds that track bitcoin are heading for a record week of outflows, which stand at $2.7 billion as of Thursday’s market close.

For more on bitcoin’s bad month, read our full story here.

— Tanaya Macheel

Nvidia, Alibaba among the names making moves premarket

Here are some stocks making the biggest moves in premarket trading Friday:

• Nvidia — Shares of the artificial intelligence chip darling fell around 2%, extending its 8.5% loss from the previous session. This comes on the heels of the company seeing a decline in its gross profit margin for the fourth quarter, and its revenue beat for the period being the smallest in two years.
• China stocks — U.S. shares of Chinese companies declined after China vowed to retaliate, if necessary, against U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest threat to impose an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods on March 4. E-commerce giant Alibaba dropped more than 4%, while fellow e-commerce giant PDD Holdings and automaker Nio each fell almost 4%. Li Auto, another automaker, slid around 5%.
• Dell Technologies — The tech stock dropped nearly 7% after the company’s fourth-quarter revenue of $23.93 billion missed the $24.56 billion consensus estimate, per LSEG. However, its adjusted earnings of $2.68 per share topped the $2.53 per share expected by analysts.

Read here for the full list.

— Sean Conlon

Thursday’s jump in weekly jobless claims is ‘somewhat concerning’ for the overall labor market, JPMorgan says

On Thursday, a Labor Department report revealed that jobless claims for the week that ended Feb. 22 reached 242,000. This was up 22,000 from the previous week’s revised level and exceeding the Dow Jones Estimate for 225,000.

This also matched the highest level since early October. Although some may have attributed this higher reading to federal employee job cuts under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, JPMorgan told clients in a recent note that it does not believe this to the case.

“While it’s possible that weather and seasonal noise contributed to the spike, the sharp move higher is somewhat concerning for the jobs picture,” economist Bennett Parrish said. “We do not think the latest increase was driven by job losses among government contractors and layoffs among federal employees are not captured by the headline figures.”

— Lisa Kailai Han

China vows retaliation against additional U.S. tariffs

China on Friday opposed President Donald Trump’s latest tariff threat, with its Ministry of Commerce saying: “If the U.S. insists on its own way, China will take all necessary countermeasures to defend its legitimate rights and interests.”

“We urge the U.S. side to not repeat its own mistakes, and to return as soon as possible to the right track of properly resolving conflicts through dialogue on equal footing,” a ministry spokesperson said, according to a CNBC translation.

— Anniek Bao, Evelyn Cheng

SEC says most meme coins are not securities

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued long sought after guidance Thursday evening saying it does not deem most meme coins securities under U.S. federal law; that they have “limited or no use or functionality” and are “more akin to collectibles.”

“A meme coin does not constitute any of the common financial instruments specifically enumerated in the definition of ‘security’ because, among other things, it does not generate a yield or convey rights to future income, profits, or assets of a business,” the statement said. “In other words, a meme coin is not itself a security.”

Dogecoin, the original meme coin and sixth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rose 3%. The token tied to Solana, which has become the go-to host for meme coins – including the Official Trump meme coin – rose 2%.

Coinbase and Robinhood were up 1% each in after hours trading.

For more, read our full story here.

— Tanaya Macheel

Nasdaq-100 just suffered fastest 5% decline from an all-time high since Sept. 2020, Bespoke says

The Nasdaq-100 index has fallen 7.33% since reaching an all-time high of 22,175.6 six days ago on Wednesday Feb. 19, the fastest decline of 5% or more since Septemner 2020, according to Bespoke Investment Group.

The Nasdaq-100 is made up of the 100 largest companies, adjusted for modified market capitalization, that trade on Nasdaq in the materials, consumer discretionary, consumer staples, healthcare, industrials, technology, telecommunications, and utilities industries.

— Scott Schnipper

Stocks head for losing week and month

With just Friday’s session left in the trading week and month, the major major indexes are on track for losses. Here’s where they stand:

— Alex Harring

See the stocks moving after hours

These are some of the stocks making the biggest moves in extended trading:

• Elastic — The data analytics stock soared 18% following a better-than-expected report for the fiscal third quarter.
• Redfin — The real estate technology stock sank 12% after posting a wider loss per share in the fourth quarter than analysts expected, per LSEG.
• Rocket Lab — The space stock dropped 7% on the back of soft guidance. 

Click here for the full list.

— Alex Harring

Futures edge higher

Dow futures ticked higher by 0.1% shortly after 6 p.m. ET. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures each added 0.2%.

— Alex Harring