Feb 26, 2026 · QQQ/SPY Market Review · 65 headlines
QQQ and SPY opened slightly above their previous closes and reached modest highs near 09:49 ET, then fell sharply through late morning. QQQ touched a low near 11:35 ET at about 2.02% below its previous close, while SPY was down about 1.24%. Both recovered part of the decline before weakening again after hours. By 04:00 ET the next morning, QQQ was down 1.59% and SPY 0.99%, leaving QQQ behind by 0.60 percentage points. Big Tech borrowing and infrastructure-cost reports, the Pentagon-Anthropic dispute over military AI safeguards, Fed and labor-market signals, and U.S.-Iran and China-related headlines provided the main context.
Published
A report said Alphabet and other large technology companies could each borrow hundreds of billions of dollars, while a European cloud provider raised prices by nearly 40%. These reports kept the cost of AI infrastructure and funding in focus during the selloff.
Initial jobless claims were 212,000 versus 215,000 expected. Fed Governor Stephen Miran called for four 25-basis-point cuts this year, while Austan Goolsbee said large cuts should wait until inflation eases.
The Pentagon-Anthropic dispute over military AI access and autonomous-weapons safeguards unfolded through the day. Separate reports covered Chinese rare-earth constraints and a multibillion-dollar Google-Meta AI-chip agreement, keeping both governance and hardware supply in view.
A report said Trump-Xi summit preparations had encountered planning gaps. Iran-U.S. indirect talks later concluded with the mediator citing significant progress, and Oman said technical-level talks would follow the next week.
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