Everyone Dumped This Stock... But It Might Pop Soon

FEB. 17, 2026

Half of Asia just clocked out. Iran is firing missiles during peace talks. And the SaaSpocalypse found its first survivor.

Gong Xi Fa Cai to the Main Street fam.

It's Lunar New Year. Year of the Horse. And half the Asia session just went dark for the week.

Back in the West? The SaaSpocalypse is still eating software stocks alive. Iran is literally firing live missiles into the Strait of Hormuz while sitting at the negotiating table. And tech can't stop bleeding after the long weekend.

Nasdaq is down half a percent at midday. The Dow is pretending everything's fine. It's not.

Let's get into it.

Year of the Horse. Let's ride. 🐎

ASIA SESSION

HALF THE WORLD CLOCKED OUT

The biggest liquidity vacuum of the year just hit. Here's who's dark and for how long:

China is out for 8 full trading days. That's the longest shutdown of the year.

With mainland markets shut, all China-related price discovery shifts offshore. H-shares, ADRs, commodities proxies, offshore yuan. That's the only game in town until Feb 24th.

Here's why this matters: any macro headlines that drop during the break don't get priced in domestically. They bottleneck. Then they reprice violently on reopen.

We've seen this movie before.

Beijing is pushing a record travel surge for the holiday. If consumption data comes in hot, Chinese consumer and travel names could gap up hard on the 24th. If the numbers are mid... well, you know what happens to Squatters.

Thin liquidity means bigger moves on smaller catalysts. Japan is the one to watch by default this week. The Nikkei ripped 5% last week and Q4 GDP just came in light. Don't get caught off guard.

GEOPOLITICS

IRAN CLOSED THE STRAIT. DURING PEACE TALKS.

You can't make this up.

Iran and the US sat down for round two of nuclear talks in Geneva today. And literally as the negotiations kicked off, Iran's Revolutionary Guards fired live missiles into the Strait of Hormuz and temporarily shut it down for "security precautions."

First time Iran has ever actually closed parts of the Strait since tensions escalated.

20% of the world's oil flows through that chokepoint.

The cast is wild. Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on one side. Iran's FM Araghchi on the other. Oman mediating in the middle. IAEA chief Grossi floating around providing "technical advice."

Trump on Air Force One: "I don't think they want the consequences of not making a deal."

Supreme Leader Khamenei: "More dangerous than the warship is the weapon that can sink it."

20% of global oil. One chokepoint. Two aircraft carriers.

Oil spiked on the closure headlines, then pulled back after Araghchi said they reached an understanding on "guiding principles."

WTI is sitting at about $63 right now. Stuck between the geopolitical risk premium pushing higher and the oversupply narrative keeping a lid on it.

The US has two carrier strike groups in the Gulf. The Lincoln and the Ford. Last week they literally shot down an Iranian drone that got too close.

If these talks collapse? Oil rips to $80+ easy. If a deal materializes? Could dump below $60 as Iranian crude comes back online. Binary coin flip.

The Landlord already has enough on his plate with CPI at 2.4% without an oil shock messing up the math. Watch crude futures and defense names closely. Don't hold heavy directional bets into these headlines.

INSIDER EDGE

THE SAASPOCALYPSE PARADOX

SaaS stocks are getting absolutely mogged by AI fear right now.

The iShares Software ETF (IGV) is down over 23% year-to-date. $1 trillion in market cap has evaporated from software companies since late January. Jefferies traders literally named it the "SaaSpocalypse." The vibe on the software desk is pure "get me out" energy.

The trigger? Anthropic's Claude Cowork launch on January 30th.

The market suddenly realized: if an AI agent can do the work of 10 employees, you don't need 10 Salesforce seats. You need one. That's a 90% revenue compression for the per-seat model the entire SaaS industry is built on.

Atlassian dropped 35% in a single week. Intuit got cooked for 34%. Salesforce, Adobe, ServiceNow, all of them dragged to multi-year lows.

But here's the thing.

Bank of America's Vivek Arya pointed out something the market is completely ignoring.

Investors are simultaneously punishing hyperscaler stocks because "AI capex won't generate returns" AND destroying software stocks because "AI will be so successful it replaces all software."

Both of those things cannot be true at the same time.

Think of the SaaS industry like a giant apartment building. Every company that uses Salesforce, Jira, Intuit... they're tenants. They pay rent every month based on how many seats they occupy.

AI agents show up and say "you don't need 10 people in that apartment anymore. One agent can do the work of 10."

So the tenant cancels 9 of their 10 seats. That's the seat compression thesis.

But if AI capex is a waste and the tech doesn't work... then the software disruption threat is overblown. And if AI really is that disruptive, then the capex is justified and hyperscalers should be ripping. The market is pricing both fears at once, which means at least one side is wrong. That's where the opportunity lives.

$1 trillion in market cap gone. The IGV RSI hit 18. Most oversold since 1990.

Goldman Sachs still sees the application software market growing to $780 billion by 2030 at a 13% CAGR. The companies that build WITH AI instead of getting run over by it are the ones you want when the dust settles. Which brings us to...

THE BLUEPRINT

FIGGY FIGGY FIGGY
CAN'T YOU SEE

Sometimes your dips just hypnotize me.

Figma just dropped a partnership with Anthropic today called "Code to Canvas." It lets you take code built by Claude Code and convert it into fully editable designs inside Figma.

Read that again.

While every other SaaS company is getting rugged by AI, Figma is partnering with the company that caused the SaaSpocalypse.

Instead of getting disrupted, they're building the bridge between AI-generated code and human design. That's the "if you can't beat em, become their front-end" energy.

Trading at $23.40  |  52-wk high: $142.92  |  Down 84% from IPO highs

The market has been glazing the SaaSpocalypse narrative so hard that it dragged Figma down 84% from its IPO highs on pure fear.

But Figma isn't getting replaced by AI. It's becoming the design layer on top of it.

Every vibe-coded app still needs to look good. Every Claude Code output still needs a designer to touch it. Anthropic literally said "agentic coding tools haven't eliminated the need for design, they've made it more essential."

That's not cap. That's the bull case in one sentence.

AI writes the code. Design makes it real. Figma wants to own the bridge.

THE BLUEPRINT

Real talk. Earnings are tomorrow after close. This is a binary event. If you're not comfortable with a potential 15-20% move in either direction overnight, this is not your trade.

Scale small. If you want the safer play, wait for the earnings reaction and buy the dip if guidance is solid.

Cathie Wood is already buying FIG on the dip. Piper Sandler just slashed their target from $70 to $35. The stock has negative beta (-0.77). Analyst consensus is still Buy with a $52 average target. The signal is messy but the setup is interesting. I'm watching closely. Not backing the truck up before a binary event.

RADAR

WHAT'S ON DECK

TODAY (TUE)

Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and Constellation Energy (CEG) earnings after close. Iran/US talks developing. Oil on watch.

WEDNESDAY

FOMC Minutes drop. Fed speakers all week. Figma (FIG) earnings after close. Walmart (WMT) reports.

THU-FRI

More SaaSpocalypse price discovery. Hong Kong reopens Friday. Watch for China consumption headlines over the break.

NEXT TUE (FEB 25) — THE BIG ONE

NVIDIA (NVDA) earnings. Citi flagged key topics: gross margins, Anthropic/OpenAI investments, inference competition, and the Groq licensing deal. This could set the tone for the entire AI trade in Q1.

BOTTOM LINE

Short week. Thin liquidity. Asia on holiday. Iran playing war games during peace talks. SaaS stocks still trying to find a floor.

The 10Y dropping to 4.03% is the bond market quietly whispering that The Landlord might have to cut sooner than he's letting on. Two cuts priced in for 2026 now.

The playbook is simple: stay nimble, don't overleverage into a holiday-thinned tape, and keep your stops tight.

If you're eyeing Figma, respect the binary. If you're watching oil, respect the geopolitics. If you're staring at your BTC position wondering why it can't hold $70K... touch grass and come back next week.

Year of the Horse. Let's ride.

DISCLAIMER

This newsletter is for entertainment and educational purposes only. We are not financial advisors. We are a bunch of apes who figured out how to use a Bloomberg Terminal and a group chat at the same time.

Nothing here is financial advice. We don't know your risk tolerance, your portfolio, or how many times you've panic-sold at the bottom. Do your own research. Talk to an actual licensed professional before you YOLO your savings into anything we mention.

Past performance doesn't guarantee future results. The market doesn't care about your feelings, your conviction, or your "diamond hands." If you can't afford to lose it, don't trade it.

We may hold positions in securities mentioned. Trade at your own risk.