Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange, March 3, 2026.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Cloud and software stocks were a rare bright spot amid Thursday’s market drop.
The WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund (WCLD) gained 2.7%, putting the exchange-traded fund on track for its best day since April 24, when it jumped 4.7%.
Leading cloud stocks higher on Thursday was an 8.4% pop in Okta and Wix.com, and a roughly 7% gain in shares of MongoDB and Intapp. Sailpoint, an identity security tech provider for cloud enterprises, rose 6.5%, while Zscaler rose 1.5%. HubSpot and Paycom Software, top holdings in the WCLD, jumped 4.5% and 1.5%, respectively.
The rally in Okta comes after the identity security provider reported fourth-quarter results Wednesday evening that exceeded Wall Street’s estimates. The company, which has benefitted from agentic artificial intelligence tools and the rise of related security needs, gave weak guidance for its first quarter, to be sure.
Thursday’s move puts Okta on track for its best day since April 9, when it gained 11.3%. Okta remains beaten-down amid the software crush as the stock is down 9.8% year to date. Still, the company remains well-favored among analysts, some of which believe the company will be more AI resilient than its peers. JPMorgan and UBS recently highlighted Okta and Zscaler as names that will most likely withstand AI-related threats and find value from the rapidly developing technology.
“While we expect the model companies to introduce more cybersecurity products we don’t think its realistic to think they will devote resources to building infrastructure controls like endpoint agents, distributed security gateways networks (SASE), or identity authentication platforms,” UBS analyst Roger Boyd wrote in a Feb. 23 note to clients, in which he reiterated his buy rating on Okta.
WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund performance over the past year.
Cloud stocks remain under pressure for 2026 despite the day’s gains. The WCLD fund is down about 16.2% year to date.
Shares of traditional cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies have dropped this year as concerns about artificial intelligence disruption to incumbent software stocks plagued the group. The late February launch of Anthropic’s Claude Code Security, a security tool built into the company’s Claude Code AI tool on the web, pressured stocks in the software and security space.
— CNBC’s Gina Francolla contributed reporting.
