MPC Morning Call 27th February 2026 – AI Darling Turns Drag, Nvidia Beats but investor conviction weakens
Wall Street saw a choppy session, with indexes recovering from deeper intraday losses as oil reversed earlier gains on signs of progress in US–Iran nuclear talks and a bid into Treasuries pulled yields lower. The S&P 500 still closed down 0.5%, but market breadth was resilient…
WATCH ON YOUTUBE Due to increasing inaccurate AI generated financial markets news, MPC is endeavouring to verify all sources in the morning call. MPC Morning Call 27th February 2026 – AI Darling Turns Drag, Nvidia Beats but investor conviction weakens General market moves Wall Street saw a choppy session, with indexes recovering from deeper intraday losses as oil reversed earlier gains on signs of progress in US–Iran nuclear talks and a bid into Treasuries pulled yields lower. The S&P 500 still closed down 0.5%, but market breadth was resilient with roughly 350 index constituents higher, while the Nasdaq 100 fell 1.2% as megacap tech and semis bore the brunt of profit‑taking. Chipmakers led the downside after Nvidia slumped 5.5% despite another strong quarter and upbeat guidance, with the move weighing on almost every name in the semiconductor index. Nvidia’s “beat and raise” failed to clear an exceptionally high bar as investors focused instead on questions around the durability of its elevated gross margins, the sustainability of massive AI capex, and a perceived narrowing competitive moat in an “evolving world of compute.” Commentary highlighting Nvidia’s ballooning 95.2 billion dollar purchase obligations versus 16.1 billion dollars a year earlier further fed concerns that any cooling in AI demand could leave the balance sheet more exposed, helping to turn what looked like fundamentally solid numbers into a de‑risking event for the broader AI complex. Corporate highlights (XYZ, Dell and Warner Bros) Block (XYZ) will cut about 4,000 jobs – nearly half its workforce – as it leans aggressively into in‑house AI tools, a move that sent the stock up as much as 22% in extended trade and underscored management’s view that many firms will be forced into similar AI-driven restructurings. Dell guided to around 50 billion dollars in AI server revenue in FY27, highlighted a record 43 billion dollar AI-related backlog, and lifted its buyback by 10 billion dollars as shares jumped about 10% post‑results. Warner Bros Discovery said a revised takeover proposal from Paramount Skydance offers a better outcome for shareholders than its prior agreement with Netflix, reshaping the strategic calculus in US media consolidation. US–Iran talks (military build up) US and Iranian negotiators ended a third round of nuclear talks in Geneva with mediator Oman flagging “significant progress” and plans to resume discussions after consultations in respective capitals. President Donald Trump has simultaneously warned that “bad things” could happen without meaningful progress and backed this rhetoric with one of the largest recent US military deployments in the Middle East, keeping focus on supply risks from Iran, a key OPEC crude producer. AI pushback An emerging 2026 narrative centers on a broad pushback against unconstrained AI use, spanning military, criminal and market domains. Anthropic’s refusal to give the Pentagon blanket “all lawful purposes” access to Claude, the Trump administration’s threat to punish that stance via contracts and supply‑chain designations, a high‑profile Claude‑enabled data theft in Mexico, and claims that unreliable models have fed a trillion‑dollar SaaS sell‑off together frame a reckoning over AI liability, ethics, and systemic risk. Commodities, Energy & FX ASX Overnight: SPI 9140 (+0.66%) Results pending on Friday: Airtasker (ART) | Coles (COL) | Harvey Norman (HVN) | PEXA (PXA) | TPG Telecom (TPG) | Virgin Australia (VGN) | Star Entertainment (SGR) Private sector credit data for January is set for release at 11.30am. Overseas, there are CPI reports pending from France and Germany and early on Saturday, PPI data from the US. Corporate news Harvey Norman reported a 16.5 per cent rise in first-half profit, supported by higher system sales, improved margins across franchising and overseas retail operations, and stable property earnings. Mesoblast has reported a sharp lift in first-half revenue following the commercial launch of its cell therapy Ryoncil in the United States, while narrowing its net loss. Coles has posted strong earnings and sales growth in its supermarket business, though the result was weighed down by its liquor division where earnings halved over the past six months. Click here for full summary
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