By Trefis Team
Publication Date: 2026-02-24 05:06:00
IBM just had its worst single-day drop in over 25 years – a 13.15% plunge to $223.35 on February 23, 2026. Month-to-date, the stock is down roughly 27%, on pace for its worst month since 1992. The trigger? Anthropic’s announcement that its “Claude Code” tool can automate COBOL modernization, directly threatening IBM’s mainframe business.
So the question is straightforward: is this a genuine structural threat, or is the market overreacting? We think it’s the latter.
But, before we dive into the details, if you seek an upside with less volatility than holding an individual stock like IBM, consider the High Quality Portfolio. It has comfortably outperformed its benchmark – a combination of the S&P 500, Russell, and S&P MidCap indexes – and has achieved returns exceeding 105% since its inception. Why is that? As a group, HQ Portfolio stocks provided better returns with less risk versus the benchmark index; less of a roller-coaster ride, as evident in HQ Portfolio…
