Dow 50,000

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Hello Peter Anthony Hovis,

Dow 50,000

On Friday, the trading floor felt like a pressure cooker that finally whistled a tune of relief.

After a bruising week where artificial intelligence went from a Wall Street darling to the catalyst behind the market beatdown, investors collectively decided the “tech wreck” had gone too far.

Result? A monster bounce for the ages.

The undisputed headline of the session was the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which conquered the psychological mountain of 50,000 for the first time in history. It took the blue-chip index 630 days to travel from 40,000 to this new peak, a journey marked by higher rates and global jitters that today seemed to vanish in a wave of “buying the dip.”

As Gina Bolvin, president of Bolvin Wealth Management Group, observed: “At 50,000, the Dow is less about celebration and more about confirmation. Confidence is real, and 2026 will be less about the Fed and more about fundamentals.”

Gina Bolvin, president of Bolvin Wealth Management Group (Photo: Boston Business Journal/W. Marc Bernsau)

The Russell 2000 soared 3.60%, while the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 were right behind with about 2% gains.

Traders were desperate for the big day after the week began in a cold sweat. A new automation tool from Anthropic could potentially automate high-level corporate legal and financial tasks, and the launch sparked a “SaaS Apocalypse” that wiped out billions from software mainstays like RELX and Experian.

Investors feared that the very technology they were funding was about to devour the business models of the companies they owned.

However, the narrative shifted today.

While Amazon shares sank 5.6% after the company revealed a staggering $200 billion capital expenditure plan for 2026, the market chose to see the silver lining: every dollar Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta spend on data centers is a dollar in the pocket of the chipmakers.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang fanned these flames during a CNBC appearance, describing a “once-in-a-generation infrastructure buildout.”

Nvidia shares roared back 7.8% as Huang told viewers:

“The demand for AI is incredibly high. We are witnessing the largest infrastructure buildout in human history… compute power is the new natural resource.”

(Photo: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg)

The rally wasn’t just a “Magnificent Seven” story. The Russell 2000 small-cap index’s huge jump signaled that the “rotational bull market” is alive and well. Even the crypto world caught the fever; Bitcoin staged a heroic comeback by reclaiming the $70,000 level after a frightening tumble that had seen it lose half its value from its October peak.

“The theme of a ‘rotational bull market’ continues to hold true,” said Craig Johnson at Piper Sandler. “We continue to favor relative strength in sectors such as energy, materials (non-precious metals), industrials, transportation, healthcare, banks, and select areas of technology and discretionary.”

In general, investors treated yesterday like a Black Friday sale where they shopped their favorite companies at depressed prices.

“This is the moment to keep your head on straight. It is not the time to panic. For long-term investors, this is the time to go shopping. A lot is on sale,” said Kenny Polcari at SlateStone Wealth.

For now, the mood is back positive.

Next week will bring a fresh batch of economic data that will include retail sales, a delayed government reading of the US employment picture in January and inflation figures. As long as the economy holds up, the AI momentum may be too powerful for investors to stay on the sidelines after the recent dip.

Buy the Dip: Why UiPath Could Be the Hidden Gem of the Software Sell-Off

Today’s Stock Pick: UiPath Inc. (PATH)

After the recent sell-off in software stocks, there might be attractive opportunities to buy these stocks on the cheap.

UiPath may be one of them.

At its simplest, UiPath builds “digital workers.”

Think about all the boring, repetitive stuff office workers hate doing, such as copying data from an email into an Excel sheet, processing invoices, or logging into three different systems just to update a customer’s address.

UiPath makes software robots that do all that grunt work automatically.

(Photo: Dreamstime)

In the early days, they called this Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The idea was to give companies a way to employ a digital workforce that never sleeps, doesn’t make typos, and costs a fraction of a human employee.

Recently, UiPath has moved beyond just basic “copy-paste” bots. They are now pushing heavily into what they call Agentic Automation. This is the next generation of their tech.

Namely, old-school bots needed strict rules (if X happens, do Y). The new “Agents” use AI to actually understand what they are looking at. They can read messy documents, make decisions, and handle complex workflows that used to require human judgment.

The first step in the process is to identify the highest-ROI opportunities for optimizing certain processes by automating with AI. So, a company might “mine” tasks to see which ones would deliver the biggest ROI.

The next step is to build AI-powered automation using different technologies like generative AI or low-code development.

Finally, the final step is to analyze, test, and optimize the automation process.

(Source: UiPath)

Is the inflection point coming? UiPath was previously limited to low-value tasks like data extraction or updating databases. Companies can outsource these tasks to third-world countries for “pennies.”

So, UiPath couldn’t win bigger contracts because companies don’t want to add higher costs just for the convenience of using the software.

However, UiPath is poised to benefit from the recent advancement in AI. It will enable UiPath to offer capabilities to automate more complex tasks like insurance claims processing. Meaning? The company might win bigger contracts down the road.

A perfect example of this is their very recent acquisition of WorkFusion (February 2026).

This deal gives them specialized AI agents that can handle highly sensitive banking tasks, like **spotting money laundering or verifying customer identities. This signals that UiPath isn’t just for generic data entry anymore; they are building highly specialized, intelligent digital employees for specific industries like finance and healthcare.

UiPath already built relationships with big companies like Spotify, Siemens, Heineken, Uber, and so on. Meaning? There will be plenty of opportunities to cross-sell these customers with newer AI offerings.

(Source: UiPath)

The company has a track record of delivering robust revenue growth. It never failed to show growth in the last 10 quarters. It boasts a 107% dollar-based net retention rate. Its ARR y-o-y growth rate is 11%.

(Source: UiPath)

Bottom line: Automation is the future, and UiPath has a strong foothold in this market. The rise of generative AI and other AI technologies may boost the company’s product offerings which will make it more valuable to companies. But you don’t have to gamble on its future. It is already making money from its process automation tools, so it can arguably be considered a safe bet on AI.

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