—
C+
C+ The full Closelook — membership. Open the C+ overview

Daily Pulse · · Daily Pulse · framework · NOW

ServiceNow (NOW) daily chart with 360-bar linear regression channel. Capitulation print −17.75% to $84.78, approaching the $81.24 technical hold level.

It ain't over until it is over

Thomas Look, Managing Director of Closelook Venture GmbH

By Thomas Look

AI-assisted, human-reviewed

The software selloff after ServiceNow and IBM has a fundamental reason. And that reason is exactly what makes this the defining test of the bottom thesis in Agentic Winners.

I. The actual reason for the selloff

The official explanation — delayed Middle East deals, Armis integration, cautious guidance — is the management narrative. The real reason is more fundamental: the genuine investment question.

ServiceNow on April 22: Revenue beat ($3.77B vs. $3.75B consensus), cRPO +25% YoY, Now Assist ACV target raised from $1.0B to $1.5B. Result: −17.75% on the trading day, from $103.07 to $84.79. Market cap from $107B to $87.8B. Roughly $20 billion evaporated in a single session — on a beat.

IBM on the same day: Revenue beat, Adj. EPS beat, software guide raised to >10% CC. Result: −6%.

Two beat-and-lose prints on the same day. That is not coincidence, and it is not the Middle East. The market is recalculating a structural equation:

Legacy deceleration + insufficient AI uplift + hybrid-instead-of-outcome pricing = premium multiple no longer defensible.

This equation deserves the real work, term by term.

Cloudflare (NET) daily chart with 360-bar linear regression channel. Price at $205 on April 23, 2026 — a software peer still holding inside its uptrend channel while NOW and IBM broke.
NET · Daily · 360-bar linear regression channel. Reference read across the software complex: Cloudflare continues to respect its uptrend channel, underlining that the April 22–23 selloff is not a blanket sector event but a structural repricing of specific names. Source: Barchart.

C — free account

The free C account unlocks the full Daily Pulse — every section of this read.

One tap with Google or one email — no password, no card. You are signed in until you sign out, on this browser, from then on.

Join the Look — free

Already joined on this browser? The full edition shows automatically — if it doesn't, sign in again here. Looking for the archive, portfolios and realtime? That is C+.

Token Split Pulse Chinese versus US model usage, measured in tokens — the demand side of the AI race, daily. See the split →