New York, January 8, 2026, 13:39 EST — Regular session
- Floor & Decor shares rose about 7% in afternoon trading, outpacing home-improvement peers
- Housing-linked retailers gained as mortgage rates stayed near their 2025 low and jobless claims remained subdued
- Barclays trimmed its price target; investors now eye Friday’s U.S. jobs report and mid-January housing data
Floor & Decor Holdings, Inc. (FND) shares climbed 7.1% to $69.32 in afternoon trade on Thursday, after touching an intraday high of $69.94 and trading more than 1.3 million shares.
The move matters because Floor & Decor sits in the middle of the housing cycle: it sells hard-surface flooring and related materials, and demand tends to follow home sales and big renovation jobs. With rates wobbling near recent lows, traders are again testing the idea that 2026 could bring a steadier flow of projects.
Mortgage rates stayed close to their 2025 floor. The average 30-year fixed U.S. mortgage rate ticked up to 6.16% this week from 6.15% last week, Freddie Mac data showed, still the lowest level since October 2024. https://apnews.com/article/mortgage-rates-housing-interest-financing-home-9d8fabf50c493891caeaf6b4d53458ee
Labor-market data also helped keep the “soft landing” script alive. Weekly jobless claims rose marginally to 208,000, and one economist cited in a Reuters report said firms were doing “more with less labor” as productivity accelerated. https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/us-weekly-jobless-claims-increase-marginally-2026-01-08/
Analyst signals were mixed. Barclays analyst Seth Sigman kept a hold rating on Floor & Decor and cut his price target — a 12-month estimate of where a stock could trade — to $70 from $78, according to a report carried by Futu. https://news.futunn.com/post/67115733/barclays-maintains-floor-decor-fndus-with-hold-rating-cuts-target
Other housing-sensitive names rose too. Home Depot gained 3.6%, Lowe’s added 3.7%, and Builders FirstSource climbed about 6.2% in the same session.
Floor & Decor’s last update to investors flagged what it called “persistently soft demand” in hard-surface flooring. Comparable store sales — sales at locations open at least a year — fell 1.2% in its third quarter, and the company projected full-year comparable sales down 1% to 2%. 1
Technically, Thursday’s jump yanked the stock away from the low-$60s, where it ended 2025 around $60.89. The move also pushed the shares back toward the $70 area, a level traders have treated as a near-term pivot over the past few sessions. 2
But the trade can flip quickly. Mortgage rates are still above 6%, and any renewed rise in yields or a weaker consumer signal could hit big-ticket renovation spending — the kind of demand Floor & Decor needs to lift traffic and pricing.
