What Happened?
A number of stocks fell in the morning session after reports of a ceasefire breach in the Middle East spiked market volatility as fears grew that a fragile U.S.-Iran truce would unravel.
This tension was compounded by Anthropic’s launch of Managed Agents, autonomous AI systems that execute complex tasks. Traders were worried these would disrupt the traditional SaaS (Software as a Service) model, by replacing human-operated tools with more efficient AI workers. The sell-off intensified after short seller Michael Burry claimed (in a deleted social media post) Anthropic was "eating Palantir’s lunch." Burry’s comments highlighted the vulnerability of legacy platforms to Anthropic’s AI solutions.
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:
- Content Delivery company F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) fell 4%. Is now the time to buy F5? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Advertising Software company AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP) fell 4.1%. Is now the time to buy AppLovin? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Payments Software company Flywire (NASDAQ: FLYW) fell 2.7%. Is now the time to buy Flywire? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Data Storage company Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT) fell 3.9%. Is now the time to buy Commvault? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Sales Software company Freshworks (NASDAQ: FRSH) fell 2.8%. Is now the time to buy Freshworks? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
Zooming In On AppLovin (APP)
AppLovin’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 54 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 about 21 hours ago when the stock dropped 4.8% on the news that Anthropic announced Managed Agents, a hosted service for long-running AI tasks.
Investors reacted to the potential disruption of existing SaaS business models, as these agents continued to pose a threat to expensive, seat-based enterprise software with more efficient, autonomous AI infrastructure.
Managed agents are specialized AI systems that can independently execute multi-step, long-duration tasks. Unlike standard AI chatbots or basic APIs that require constant human prompting, managed agents feature durable states and resumable workflows, allowing them to pause and restart without losing progress. While traditional software products require manual input for every action, these agents use "policy-guarded tools" to interact with digital environments, making them autonomous workers rather than just passive tools.
AppLovin is down 37.8% since the beginning of the year, and at $384.45 per share, it is trading 47.6% below its 52-week high of $733.60 from December 2025. Despite the year-to-date decline, investors who bought $1,000 worth of AppLovin’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $5,897.
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