NEW YORK, January 1, 2026, 11:37 ET — Market closed
- IBM shares last closed down 1.9% at $296.21, back under the $300 mark
- The Dow and S&P 500 ended 2025’s final session lower in thin trading
- Next on the calendar: IBM’s fourth-quarter earnings date and early-January U.S. data
International Business Machines Corp shares last closed down 1.9% at $296.21 on Wednesday, after trading between $295.90 and $303.00. U.S. stock markets are closed on Thursday for New Year’s Day. 1
The drop matters because it pushed IBM back below $300, a round-number level that often acts as a near-term pivot for traders. It also comes as investors reset positions for the first trading session of 2026 after a late-December pullback in equities.
IBM is a Dow component, so even modest moves can sway the index on quiet days. With liquidity — the ease of buying or selling without moving prices much — often thinner around holidays, price swings can look larger than the news flow suggests.
Wall Street ended 2025’s final session lower, with the Dow down 0.63%, the S&P 500 off 0.74% and the Nasdaq down 0.76%. “It’s perfectly fine in any bull market to have moments of cost,” said Giuseppe Sette, co-founder and president of Reflexivity, pointing to profit-taking when liquidity is low. 2
IBM sells software, consulting and infrastructure products to enterprises, and pitches itself as a hybrid-cloud and AI provider. The company reports results across Software, Consulting, Infrastructure and Financing. 3
IBM’s decline also weighed on the price-weighted Dow, where higher-priced stocks carry more influence than smaller names. A MarketWatch analysis listed IBM and Boeing among the biggest drags on the index earlier in Wednesday’s session. 4
The move tracked broader year-end pressure in technology shares rather than a single IBM-specific headline. IBM competes for corporate IT budgets with cloud and consulting rivals, and that spending backdrop remains the key driver for the stock into earnings season.
Before the next session, traders will be watching how stocks open on Friday, Jan. 2, after the New Year’s Day closure. U.S. markets are set to reopen then, returning liquidity that was patchy in the holiday-shortened week. 5
Macro data are close behind. The Labor Department’s calendar shows the December U.S. jobs report scheduled for Jan. 9 and the December consumer price index set for Jan. 13, with the November JOLTS openings report due Jan. 7 — releases that can move rate expectations and, in turn, large-cap tech shares. 6
IBM’s next company-specific catalyst is its fourth-quarter earnings report, listed by the company for Jan. 28 (preliminary date). Investors typically focus on software growth, consulting demand and cash generation when the company updates results and outlook. 7
On charts, IBM’s move back under $300 puts that level in focus as a near-term test. A rebound above it would suggest the late-December pullback is stabilizing; a failure to regain it could keep the stock sensitive to broader tech-sector swings early in 2026.
