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US stocks mostly edged higher on Friday as Wall Street kicked off trading in 2026 after its third consecutive year of double-digit percentage gains.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) gained about 0.6%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) increased 0.2%.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell below the flat line, despite gains in semiconductor giants Nvidia (NVDA), AMD (AMD), and Micron (MU).
Shares of Tesla (TSLA) fell after the EV maker’s deliveries missed expectations.
Markets are coming off a sputtering end to a roller-coaster 2025 that nevertheless ended with sizable gains for the major indexes. The benchmark S&P 500 rose over 16% for the year, while the Nasdaq Composite led gains with a more-than 20% jump.
Now the focus turns to 2026, though the year will likely begin in earnest come Monday. For stocks, the outlook calls for more optimism. Every Wall Street forecaster tracked by Bloomberg is predicting that stocks will rally for a fourth consecutive year. But plenty of risks remain: The AI boom could falter, the US economy could surprise, and President Trump, of course, remains a wild card as the fate of his most sweeping tariffs could become clearer this month.
Gold (GC=F) and silver (SI=F) advanced to open the 2026 trading year, with the precious metals building on their best annual performances since 1979, and aluminum (ALI=F) crossed $3,000 per ton for the first time since 2022.
Wall Street’s bid for a “Santa Claus rally” — during the last five trading days of December and first two of January — has so far sputtered. The S&P 500 is down nearly 1% in the period, with investors looking at a third consecutive down “Santa” period.
Among the top items on Wall Street’s 2026 list is the Federal Reserve, where the divisions that have gripped the central bank in 2025 look likely to continue this year. President Trump has promised this month to appoint a new chair to replace Jerome Powell. For now, most traders expect the central bank to hold steady on interest rates later this month, though bets are more split for March’s meeting.
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Dow, S&P 500 kick off the first day of trading with gains
Stocks kicked off the first day of trading with modest gains as semiconductor stocks lifted the S&P 500 (^GSPC).
The broad-based index gained nearl 0.2%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose 0.6%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell just below the flatline.
Tech giant Microsoft (MSFT) fell 2% while Tesla (TSLA) declined more than 2% on the heels of disappointing deliveries.
Investors await Jan. 6 when the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas kicks off, featuring Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang and AMD (AMD) CEO Lisa Su. Artificial intelligence will be front and center at the trade show.
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CES 2026: What to expect from the tech industry’s biggest show of the year Inbox
Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howely reports:
Read more here.
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Gold, silver start off 2026 steady after stellar yearly performance
Gold (GC=F) and silver (SI=F) started 2026 steady, following stellar yearly gains.
Gold rose as much as 1.9% before declining slightly to trade near $4,330 per troy ounce. Silver rose 1.4% to hover below $72 per ounce, following volatility earlier this week.
Despite some volatile trading sessions over the past week, gold and silver posted their strongest gains since 1979 last year.
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Pinterest stock rises on prediction that OpenAI may acquire the social media platform
Shares in Pinterest (PINS) jumped by more than 3% after the tech news publication The Information predicted that ChatGPT-maker OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) may look to buy the company in 2026.
In its story, The Information noted that OpenAI would likely be interested in Pinterest’s massive image stores, along with its advertising and merchant networks.
While there is no firm reporting yet that an acquisition is in the works, such a move would be the latest in a litany of acquisitions by the AI leader, helmed by Sam Altman. OpenAI’s largest acquisition to date came in May 2025, with the company’s $6.5 billion purchase of former Apple hardware designer Jony Ive’s io Products.
Other notable acquisitions by OpenAI include its purchases of the AI coding company Windsurf and the analytics platform Statsig, whose founder became OpenAI’s chief technology officer of applications.
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‘Magnificent 7’ stocks turn into the red after initial rally
The “Magnificent 7” Big Tech stocks turned into the red in midday trading on Friday after an initial bump earlier in the day.
Microsoft (MSFT) saw the biggest drop, shedding more than 2%, while Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), and Tesla (TSLA) all lost more than 1%. Alphabet (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) saw smaller turnarounds, losing less than 1%.
Nvidia (NVDA) was the sole winner through midday, gaining more than 1.6% as CEO Jensen Huang prepares to deliver a keynote address at the 2026 Consumer Technology Association (CES) conference on Jan. 5.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite averaged out at a loss of around 0.1% at 12:15 p.m. ET.
The drop comes after most of the Magnificent Seven names underperformed the S&P 500 in 2025 as investors looked to diversify into other AI plays. Only Alphabet and Nvidia beat the S&P’s 17% gain, with increases of 66% and 39%, respectively. Amazon was the biggest laggard, rising 5% over the past year.
Whether Big Tech can sustain its AI-driven rally that has seen spending and valuations both soar to new heights will be one of the biggest questions for investors in 2026. While Wall Street strategists are almost unanimously bullish, calls for further growth have been tinged with notes of worry over that growth’s sustainability.
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Companies are staying private for longer: Apollo’s Torsten Sløk
2026 holds the promise that the IPO market may pick up again, with splashy names such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPAX.PVT), Claude AI bot maker Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), and crypto exchange Kraken (KRAK.PVT) potentially making waves.
Part of the anticipation comes from the backlog created, as startups are staying private for longer.
In a new blog post, Apollo Global’s chief economist Torsten Sløk noted that the median age of companies going public in the US rose to 14 years in 2024. That’s the highest median age of IPOs since 2009. (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance is owned by Apollo Global Management.)
“With more companies staying private for longer, and in some cases staying private forever, there is a bigger need for private markets in debt and equity,” Sløk wrote.
SpaceX and Anthropic represent outliers. The Musk-led rocket company, founded in 2002, turns 24 this year, while Anthropic, founded in 2021, turns five. Kraken was founded in 2011 and will mark 15 years of doing business in 2026.
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Saks Global CEO replaced as company faces potential bankruptcy filing
The CEO of multi-brand luxury retailer Saks Global, Marc Metrick, is being replaced as the company evaluates its options to alleviate a debt crisis, including a potential bankruptcy filing.
Metrick, who was appointed CEO in July 2024 after Saks Fifth Avenue’s merger with Neiman Marcus Group, has been replaced by executive chairman Richard Baker, effective immediately, according to a press release published on Friday.
The privately held Saks Global, once a powerhouse of luxury retail, has spent the past year embroiled in a quickly worsening debt crisis.
When Hudson’s Bay Company, the Canadian holding corporation that owned Saks Fifth Avenue, acquired Neiman Marcus Group to create Saks Global in a $2.7 billion transaction, the new entity assumed a significant amount of debt. By December, the company failed to make on-time payments to service more than $100 million in bonds tied to the acquisition.
The company, which had explored options including selling a minority stake to fellow luxury big-box store Bergdorf Goodman to alleviate its debt load, has recently been preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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Tesla’s fourth quarter deliveries fall short of forecasts
Elon Musk’s Tesla (TSLA) published fourth quarter vehicle deliveries showing the carmaker missed forecasts while recording a second straight annual decline in the metric. This comes after Tesla published Wall Street consensus estimates for deliveries earlier in the week that were below those compiled by Bloomberg.
Yahoo Finance’s Pras Subramanian reports:
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Furniture stocks rise after delayed tariff increases
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Stocks rise to open first trading session of the new year
US stocks rose in the first minutes of trading on Friday as investors began the first session of 2026 after the market’s third consecutive year of double-digit percentage gains.
The benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) picked up more than 0.4%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) gained a stronger 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) gained roughly 0.2% before paring gains back to the flatline.
Gold (GC=F) and silver (SI=F) gained around 1% and 4%, respectively, through the early hours of the first day of 2026 trading, building on their best annual performances since 1979, while aluminum (ALI=F) crossed $3,000 per ton for the first time since 2022 on a litany of global supply chain disruptions.
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AI hyperscalers rally in the first early trading session of the year
AI hyperscalers notched gains in early morning trading as Wall Street kicked off a new year of trading and maintained optimism that the AI and Big Tech boom will keep on growing.
“Magnificent 7” names such as chipmaking leader Nvidia (NVDA) and hyperscalers Oracle (ORCL) and Google (GOOG) picked up more than 1% in each in the early hours of trading before the opening bell on Friday.
A basket of AI-focused companies, including Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon (AMZN), all gained upward of 0.5%.
The AI trade spent much of the second half of 2025 plagued by worries throughout the market that valuations were getting too lofty and spending was getting too out of control.
But the companies have persisted, and Wall Street strategists see it as largely unlikely that the biggest companies in the world are going anywhere. An ETF tracking the sector (XLK) returned more than 13.5% over the past six months.
The market is in for “another year of double-digit gains mirroring the late 1990s equity boom,” wrote Nicole Inui, HSBC head of equity strategy for the Americas, in the bank’s 2026 outlook.
“Back then, like today, tech is leading, return concentration is high, and a new technology is promising to be transformational. We expect equities to remain supported by the AI-led capex boom,” Inui wrote.
Goldman Sachs (GS) strategist Peter Oppenheimer told clients in an outlook note that while there is a risk of over-concentration and high valuations in the market, investor optimism may be able to override bearish narratives.
“Despite the higher-than-average valuations across equity markets, there is potential for upside risks to our central forecasts if investor optimism, driven by the AI and easing narratives, triggers further valuation expansion, in common with most optimism phases of bull markets.”
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Good morning. Here’s what’s happening today.
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4 predictions for 2026
From SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) to the supermarket, 2026 is shaping up to be a year of massive shifts and financial pivots.
Yahoo Finance’s senior reporter Hamza Shaban takes a look at some of the key 2026 predictions.
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US 30-year yields rise to highest since September on growth risk
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Aluminum hits $3,000 for first time since 2022 on supply concern
Aluminum (ALI=F) rose above $3,000 a ton for the first time since 2022 due to a tightening supply outlook and long-term demand bets, joining other base metals reaching milestones.
Bloomberg News reports:
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AI euphoria lifts Asia tech as ‘late-cycle’ volatility looms
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Baidu soars as AI chip arm Kunlunxin files for Hong Kong listing
Reuters reports:
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Oil rises with OPEC+, Venezuela in focus as new year kicks off
Oil climbed higher on the first trading day of 2026 after posting its biggest annual drop since 2026, as traders assessed the upcoming OPEC+ meeting, alongside geopolitical concerns in Venezuela, Ukraine, and Iran.
Bloomberg News reports:
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Gold and silver open 2026 with gains following huge annual surge
Bloomberg News reports:
