Equity and commodity ETFs prove popular as AI fears drive volatility in certain stocks: Saxo Monthly Client Trends Report February

Fears about disruption to a swathe of business models from AI drove a lot of negative sentiment in US stock markets last month, whilst the UK market rallied to fresh all-time highs.

It wasn’t a case of sell America as such but the striking down of President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs by the Supreme Court introduced a new wave of economic uncertainty.

A Citrini Research report imagined huge economic dislocation from AI, fraying investors’ nerves further after the release of various AI tools have spooked markets over possible disruption. Block announced late last week that it would cut 40% of jobs, perhaps the largest corporate layoff in US history, because of AI. Throughout the month OpenAI and Anthropic among others rolled out new tools that seemed to disrupt areas of the economy from wealth managers to real estate services companies. Meanwhile worries about private credit did for shares in the sector.

Dispersion among US equities was strong as we saw Energy, Utilities, Staples, Materials and Real Estate rallying while tech and financials slipped. The biggest losses were in software with the iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) -17% for the month.

Earlier in the month hyperscalers' earnings updates worried markets about the pace of spending. Alphabet spooked the horses as the company reported capex spend in the range of $175 billion to $185 billion in 2026 — nearly double what it spent in 2025.  Amazon projected $200bn in capex in 2026, about $50bn more than expected. AI bubble fears resurfaced as  hyperscalers raised capex without a clear path to payoff.  

By the end of the month all that extra spending showed up in bumper earnings for Nvidia, but the stock still sold off ~10% across the following two sessions. 

In the UK, the FTSE 100 benefitted as investors rotated out of tech as it climbed to a fresh record high on the last trading day of February. The index enjoyed its best monthly gain in more than three years. 

Client Trends

Saxo UK clients were active in US tech, net buying Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Alphabet and Palantir. Clients were by a small margin net sellers of Tesla. Among European stocks, Novo Nordisk was the top pick as its shares slumped on underwhelming clinical trial results. Rolls-Royce and Lloyds were the most actively traded UK stocks with clients net buyers of both. Clients also leant into a number of data analytics stocks like RELX and LSEG, which were among the stocks hit by AI disruption fears.

Clients increased exposure to the precious metals trade via the iShares Physical Gold ETC and the iShares Physical Silver ETC.

Diversification was a strong theme as we saw significant positive buy ratios for a range of equity and commodity exchange traded products. ETFs offering exposure to global, US and UK equities were the most popular but we also saw strong buying in commodity-linked ETFs delivering exposure to copper, gold and silver.

Top 40 most traded stocks and ETFs in February