What Happened?

A number of stocks fell in the afternoon session after software stocks declined for a second consecutive session, extending the profit-taking that began earlier in the week. 

The broader market was essentially flat when the correction started the previous day: the S&P 500 was unchanged, the Nasdaq barely moved, confirming this was sector-level digestion, not broad risk-off selling. To understand the pullback, you need to understand the depth of what preceded it. In a 48-hour span in early February 2026, roughly $285 billion was wiped from software stock valuations after Anthropic's Claude Cowork platform raised genuine fears that AI agents could make per-seat SaaS licensing obsolete, a moment the market called the "SaaSpocalypse." 

Over the following months, the IGV fell more than a third from its September 2025 peak, hitting a 52-week low on April 10. At that point, approximately 75% of software stocks were screening as technically oversold. The recovery was fast. The IGV rose 21% in May alone, its best monthly performance since October 2001, and gained approximately 40-44% from the April low. By June 2, it had crossed back into positive YTD territory for the first time, sitting approximately 11% below its all-time peak. Strong results from Snowflake and MongoDB gave the rebound fundamental cover. But the final push was options- and retail-driven, not institutional. On June 2, call volumes in the IGV outpaced puts, and Oracle options saw billions in premium trade with a three-to-one call-to-put ratio. 

That is the key to understanding why portfolio managers are likely not defending these levels. Most institutional managers who cut software exposure during the SaaSpocalypse would have faced a recovery that moved faster than their mandates allowed for rebuilding positions. Rather than chase, watching for a pullback and a better entry might be better. For those already positioned from the early recovery, the rational move was to let names reset before adding.

The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.

Among others, the following stocks were impacted:

• Automation Software company ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) fell 6.1%. Is now the time to buy ServiceNow? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Data Storage company Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) fell 5.8%. Is now the time to buy Snowflake? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.

Zooming In On ServiceNow (NOW)

ServiceNow’s shares are very volatile and have had 21 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.

The previous big move we wrote about was 2 days ago when the stock gained 9.4% on the news that it continued to rally extending double digit gains from the previous session, which was driven by two forces: Snowflake's blowout Q1 results showing enterprise AI adoption is accelerating rather than disrupting software demand, and Dell's confirmation that enterprises are committing to full-stack AI infrastructure at a scale nobody had modelled. 

ServiceNow and Snowflake are formal platform partners via a Zero Copy integration — Snowflake data feeds directly into ServiceNow workflows — so Snowflake's acceleration in AI accounts is a direct pipeline read-through for ServiceNow, not just a sentiment trade. 

A fresh catalyst added further lift: at Computex in Taiwan, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explicitly backed enterprise software firms in the AI era. It is an "incredible time" to be a software company, Huang added.

ServiceNow is down 18.4% since the beginning of the year, and at $120.26 per share, it is trading 42.4% below its 52-week high of $208.94 from July 2025. Despite the year-to-date decline, investors who bought $1,000 worth of ServiceNow’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $1,309.

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