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Today's Bonus Article 3 Stocks to Avoid as Software Sector StumblesWritten by Dan Schmidt. Article Posted: 1/17/2026. 
Summary - Software stocks have struggled over the last few months, especially those in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry.
- SaaS firms face substantial disruption from AI agents like Claude Code, which can automate entire workflows and eliminate the need for expensive software licenses.
- Salesforce, DocuSign, and Atlassian could be three industry stocks at risk of losing revenue to new AI tools.
The software sector has already seen more carnage this month rivaling the finale of Game of Thrones, and we’re still only halfway through January. Many names in the industry have been in extended drawdowns since early 2025, and this week brought fresh pain for large software firms thanks to ‘Claude Code,’ the new agentic coding tool for Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet AI bot. Claude Code launched last year, but a recent update this month renewed selling pressure on several legacy software stocks. Is the selloff overdone, or are software names facing a prolonged bear market? Why ‘Claude Code’ Has the Software Sector Spooked Claude Code is rattling the tech sector because of its hands-off, end-to-end design. Unlike earlier AI agents that produced snippets of code for specific tasks (e.g., bug fixes), Claude Code provides a fully autonomous command-line system. Developers can integrate entire workflows into the tool for writing, testing, and debugging. Rather than acting as a personal assistant or editor, Claude Code’s agents can oversee entire tasks from start to finish, handling high-level design of software stacks with minimal human oversight. A major force in the crypto world is quietly becoming one of gold's most aggressive buyers — and most investors have no idea it's happening.
A longtime gold analyst says profits from a leading stablecoin operation are being funneled into physical gold at a scale that could materially impact supply and demand. After a recent meeting with insiders, he began outlining what this trend could mean for gold prices and a small group of companies positioned to benefit. Read the full gold briefing here A recent example from a Google engineer illustrates why SaaS companies are alarmed. Earlier this month, Gemini API developer Jaana Dogan went viral after claiming Claude Code recreated a year’s worth of her team’s work in about an hour. If a year’s work can be completed in a single hour, it’s a nightmare scenario for SaaS firms that earn much of their revenue from annual licenses. Analysts at Oppenheimer highlighted that risk in their downgrade of creative-design giant Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) earlier this week, arguing that software is shifting from an AI beneficiary to an AI victim as these tools improve. 3 Software Stocks to Avoid as Sector-Wide Panic Ensues Adobe shares are down more than 25% over the past 12 months, but they aren’t the only software names in trouble. The three stocks below face material headwinds from the expanding role of AI in workflow productivity. Salesforce: Agentic AI Risks Cannibalizing Key Business Salesforce Inc. (NYSE: CRM) is the original SaaS company, having gone public early enough to secure the coveted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) ticker. The company offers a comprehensive suite of cloud-based business platforms and historically relied on substantial revenue from licensing its platform to large enterprises. But if a relatively small number of AI agents can replicate the work of hundreds of human reps, Salesforce could see a meaningful erosion of that high-margin license revenue. Compounding the risk, the company has spent more than 20 years building a complex cloud ecosystem that many modern businesses now view as cumbersome, inefficient, and expensive. 
CRM shares staged a brief rally in December, breaking above the 50-day and 200-day simple moving averages (SMAs) before the news of Adobe’s downgrade and the latest Claude Code update hit the market. On Jan. 13, CRM plunged 7% in a single session, slipping below both the 50-day and 200-day SMAs amid heavy selling. A bearish crossover appears to be forming on the moving average convergence divergence (MACD) indicator, suggesting this selling pressure may persist. DocuSign: A Middle Man at Risk of Being Cut Out DocuSign Inc. (NASDAQ: DOCU) was a major beneficiary of the work-from-home shift during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the peak, DOCU shares reached meme-stock levels, trading above $300 per share and driving the company’s valuation dramatically higher. Like many COVID-era winners, DocuSign suffered when the Fed began raising rates, and it now faces renewed risks of obsolescence. DocuSign’s troubles began when e-signature capabilities became bundled into larger platforms such as Microsoft 365. Its Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) could also be bypassed as AI agents become more tailored and customers increasingly negotiate and automate agreements within their own enterprise software. 
DOCU shares recently hit a new 52-week low and continue to face stiff resistance at the 50-day SMA. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) remains in oversold territory below 30, and selling volume is beginning to ramp up — not a chart that inspires confidence. Atlassian: Potential Obsolescence From Autonomous Workflows Atlassian Corp plc (NASDAQ: TEAM) is the Australian SaaS firm behind popular workflow tools such as Jira, Confluence, Trello, Bitbucket, Loom, and Slack. If you collaborate on projects, you’ve likely used one or more of these products. Although Atlassian has been aggressively adding AI features across its suite, the company still faces the risk that autonomous agents like Claude Code could centralize and streamline workflows in ways that make some standalone Atlassian products redundant. Atlassian licenses several standalone platforms, and the loss of relevance for any single product could materially harm the company’s results. 
TEAM shares were rejected at the 50-day SMA and have fallen seven of the past 10 trading days, losing more than 15% in that span. A bearish MACD crossover confirms the latest leg of the downtrend, and the stock risks erasing more than two years’ worth of gains if the trend continues — a realistic possibility given current momentum.
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