NEW YORK, Jan 4, 2026, 11:50 ET — Market closed
- Caterpillar shares finished the last session up 4.4% at $598.41, ending just below the $600 mark.
- The stock helped lift the Dow in the first trading day of 2026 as investors rotated back into big industrial names.
- Investors now watch Wednesday’s CES keynote, Friday’s U.S. jobs report and late-January earnings timing.
Caterpillar Inc (NYSE:CAT) shares closed up 4.4% on Friday at $598.41, after touching $599.60 intraday. The heavy-equipment maker finished the week as one of the biggest boosts to the Dow’s first-session gain of 2026.
That jump matters now because Caterpillar is a bellwether for global capital spending, and its high share price gives it extra pull in the price-weighted Dow. With U.S. markets closed on Sunday, the question for Monday is whether buyers keep leaning into industrial cyclicals or fade the move.
On Friday, the Dow rose 0.66% while the S&P 500 added 0.19% and the Nasdaq ended slightly lower, Reuters reported, as investors started the year in a “buy the dip, sell the rip” mode, in the words of Charles Schwab strategist Joe Mazzola. Caterpillar climbed about 4.5% in that session, alongside Boeing, as the rebound in industrial names offset weakness elsewhere.
Caterpillar sells construction and mining equipment and also builds engines, turbines and locomotives, with 2024 sales and revenues of $64.8 billion. The company reports results through Construction Industries, Resource Industries and Energy & Transportation. 1
Investors have also been screening CAT through the lens of the data-center buildout, because large computing campuses need power equipment as well as earthmoving machines. Caterpillar has previously pointed to strong demand for power-generation systems tied to rapid data-center expansion, a theme that has kept attention on its Energy & Transportation business.
Moves in adjacent “picks and shovels” names underscored that trade on Friday. Vertiv, which supplies power and cooling equipment for data centers, jumped about 8.4%, while Cummins — a major maker of engines and power systems — gained about 2.3%.
But cyclicals still sit on a macro fault line: if rate-cut expectations slip, the cost of financing equipment and projects rises, and orders can slow. Philadelphia Fed President Anna Paulson said on Saturday that additional rate cuts could be “some way off” while officials take stock of inflation and growth. 2
The next macro test comes quickly. The U.S. Employment Situation report for December is scheduled for Friday, Jan. 9 at 8:30 a.m. ET, and the CPI report for December is due Tuesday, Jan. 13 at 8:30 a.m. ET. 3
The Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting is Jan. 27–28, according to the central bank’s calendar, and it will be another checkpoint for how fast rates may move this year. 4
For Caterpillar, the next company catalyst is quarterly results: the company has not confirmed a date, but MarketBeat estimates fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday, Jan. 29 before the bell, with a conference call expected Friday, Jan. 30. The same calendar shows CAT’s next ex-dividend date as Jan. 20, with a $1.51 quarterly payout scheduled for Feb. 19. 5
Traders will be watching whether the stock can clear and hold above the $600 round-number level after Friday’s close just below it. On the fundamentals, the focus is likely to stay on order trends, dealer inventory and whether demand for power-related products continues to offset softer pockets in construction and mining.
Before any of that, the market gets a fresh headline risk this week: Caterpillar said it will appear at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, and CEO Joe Creed is scheduled to deliver a keynote on Wednesday, Jan. 7 at 9:00 a.m. PST (noon ET).
