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Software stocks rebounded sharply on Friday, with ServiceNow, Inc. emerging as one of the top gainers in the S&P 500, and extended gains in overnight trading as investors took profits in red-hot chip stocks and weighed the implications of reports that OpenAI may delay its initial public offering.
ServiceNow’s stock rose nearly 10%, while Workday and Datadog shares gained 9.2% and 8.5%, respectively. A wide variety of software-as-a-service companies recorded sharp gains – Microsoft gained 5.8%, Salesforce rose 5.5%, Intuit rose 5%, and Adobe rose 4.8%.
All of them rose higher in overnight trading, with gains of about 2% in NOW and MSFT. A mix of triggers weighed the market on Friday. U.S. inflation rose above 4% in May, data showed on Thursday, as the war in Iran drove up energy prices, keeping alive the possibility of a Fed rate hike.
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Investors appeared to take profits in chip stocks following Micron’s blowout quarterly report on Wednesday and the strong rally in memory and semiconductor shares that followed the next day, with the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) declining 5.6% on Friday.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing sources, that OpenAI may delay its IPO until next year, partly due to financial challenges.
Advances by OpenAI and rival Anthropic have been among the key drivers of software stocks’ sharp underperformance in 2026, amid growing concerns that AI tools could take over many of the specialized tasks long handled by niche software providers.
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Shares of Oracle, whose future business is tied to OpenAI through its $300 billion deal, closed 3% lower on Friday.
While the rally lacked a clear catalyst, the SaaS rebound gained attention as analysts and investors had, for months, maintained that several software stocks were undervalued relative to their underlying fundamentals and poised to recover.
On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment was ‘neutral’ for NOW, WDAY, and IGV, ‘bearish’ for ADBE, and ‘bullish’ for CRM.
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“$CRM starting today and next 2 weeks, it may be software, banking and pharma kingdom, Memory and chips may on correction mode with 1 or 2 dead cat bounce, as previously said i strongly believe CRM target 190+ and MSFT 425+ in first 2 weeks of July,” a trader said.
Microsoft shares are down 22.5% year to date, and are on track to record their worst half-yearly performance since 2022.
Another wrote: “IGV too predictable now. Rotation back here, nice text again at 200 weekly, but I think Q3 starts good here.”
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The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV), widely considered as a benchmark for software stocks, is down 16.5% in this period, compared to a 7.4% gain in the benchmark S&P 500 index.
For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.
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