February jobs data, Broadcom earnings, and AI fears abound: What to watch this week

February jobs data, Broadcom earnings, and AI fears abound: What to watch this week

Jake Conley · Breaking Business News Reporter

Updated Sun, March 1, 2026 at 10:38 PM GMT+1 8 min read

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The first two months of the year are already in the books.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) closed at 6,878.88 on Friday, logging a weekly loss of about 0.5%, while the benchmark index is hanging on to a roughly 0.5% gain for the year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) shed about 1%, or roughly 520 points, on Friday and finished February up 1.9% for the year. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell 0.9% on Friday and has lost roughly 2.5% so far in 2026.

A blowout earnings report from Nvidia (NVDA) on Wednesday didn't settle fears about continued AI disruptions, and another round of private credit-related selling showed pressure remains high in the financial sector too.

In the week ahead, a crucial February jobs report and a key earnings report from chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO) will headline the calendar.

Geopolitical uncertainty also remains a focus for investors, with tensions between the US and Iran still simmering. Thursday's talks in Geneva ended with no deal between the two nations, and the US embassy in Jerusalem authorized nonessential personnel and family members to leave the country on Friday amid a broader US military buildup in the region.

The week ahead

Headlining the economic data calendar in the week ahead will be Friday's February jobs report. Wall Street economists expect the US economy created 60,000 new jobs last month, a slowdown from the 130,000 jobs created in January. That report handily beat forecasts and largely forestalled fears of an imminent slowdown in the US economy.

Investors will also get readings on the manufacturing industry from S&P Global and the Institute for Supply Management on Monday, plus more labor data from ADP and the weekly initial jobless claims figures, due out Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.

In the corporate world, investor attention will be split between the AI trade and the state of US consumer spending.

On Wednesday, Broadcom will provide another reading on AI demand, following Nvidia's earnings report, which disappointed investors. That report will be followed by Marvell Technology (MRVL) on Thursday.

In the retail sector, reports from Target (TGT) and Costco (COST) on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively, will anchor a week full of readouts from big box retailers and grocers, including Ross Stores (ROST), Kroger (KR), BJ's Wholesale Club (BJ), and Macy's (M).

'Risk rather than opportunity'

Nvidia once again exceeded analyst estimates for revenue and adjusted earnings on Wednesday. The company raised its guidance as CEO Jensen Huang used its earnings call to talk up the soaring demand for Nvidia's chips.

The problem for Nvidia, Capital analyst Kyle Rodda wrote in a client note, is how broader investor sentiment toward the AI trade has changed. Even with some legitimate worries around potential supply constraints and other factors, "Nvidia’s Q4 numbers for all intents and purposes [were] blemish free," Rodda said.

"The signal here is that despite extraordinary results, there is an increasingly embedded sentiment and behavioural shift happening in the markets," Rodda wrote. "AI is being framed as a risk rather than opportunity, with investors more focused on avoiding losers than picking winners in a market plagued by valuation and overinvestment concerns."

Rodda's argument gets at the "AI scare trade," which dominated the conversation last Monday and Tuesday after a report from investment firm Citrini Research posited a future scenario in which white-collar workers are displaced en masse. The report sent the stocks it mentioned as vulnerable plummeting — IBM (IBM) suffered one of its worst single-day losses since 2000, and Zscaler (ZS) finished the week down close to 10%.

In a client note on Friday, Bank of America strategists argued that the reality laid out in the Citrini report is "not internally consistent and highly at odds with sound economic theory."

Why, then, did it trigger a sell-off?

"The answer is a combination of crowded positioning and multiple equilibria, similar to a bank run triggered by unfounded rumors of insolvency," the analysts wrote.

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, 2026. (Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images) · Anadolu via Getty Images

Is the labor market 'flashing red'?

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Trump said, "More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country."

But that dynamic isn't necessarily reflected in the current state of the labor market.

Last time the Bureau of Labor Statistics published its monthly jobs report, investors were greeted with a whopper of an overperformance: 130,000 jobs added during the month, double the Bloomberg consensus estimates of 65,000 hires.

The spread between January's estimates and reported figures makes the February report crucial, BNP strategists wrote in a recent client note.

Economists are once again predicting that the US economy added 60,000 jobs. If February's data shows another strong outperformance, "such a print could more conclusively put to bed arguments that the labor market is 'flashing red' and that a rapid accumulation of labor slack is just around the corner," the strategists said.

But while the headline figure of 130,000 jobs added in January was a rosy number, revisions to 2025's numbers suggested that employers added an average of only 15,000 jobs per month last year. Job openings dropped for the fourth month in a row in December, while openings have remained little changed, according to the BLS's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

"It's a labor market more defined by its inactivity than its vigor," ADP chief economist Nela Richardson told Bloomberg in televised comments Thursday morning. "It's very unusual to see the kind of caution we’ve seen from employers."

The jobs report — combined with any changes to the unemployment rate — could swing rate-setting policy depending on where the numbers print. This week's data will be some of the last inputs Federal Reserve officials get before the blackout period begins ahead of the Fed's March 17-18 meeting.

"A strong report for February could coalesce the FOMC around a no-rate-cut baseline in 2026, down from the one-cut previously," or even push the governors toward a rate hike in 2026, BNP strategists wrote. "However, the risks of a decline may be underappreciated."

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