NEW YORK, January 8, 2026, 13:46 EST — Regular session
- Home Depot shares rose about 3.5% in afternoon trade, outpacing a flat broader market
- The retailer this week spotlighted Hubspace smart-home upgrades and new partnerships at CES 2026
- Investors are watching Friday’s U.S. payrolls report and Home Depot’s Feb. 24 earnings date
Home Depot shares climbed 3.5% to $361.25 at 1:46 p.m. EST on Thursday, lifting a Dow-heavy lineup even as the tech-heavy Nasdaq was under pressure. The S&P 500 tracker was little changed while the Nasdaq 100 ETF slipped about 0.7%.
The bounce matters because Home Depot sits close to the fault line between rates, jobs and home spending, and traders are trying to pin down how fast that cycle turns. Weekly jobless claims edged up to 208,000, while a Chicago Fed estimate put December’s unemployment rate at 4.6% ahead of Friday’s government jobs report.
Home improvement demand tends to follow housing activity, and big projects get postponed when financing stays expensive and homeowners stay put. UBS analyst John Lovallo expects new home sales to rise 2% in 2026, Barron’s reported, a view that would support the wider ecosystem around repair, paint and fixtures.
The retailer also used CES week to push its Hubspace smart-home platform, saying a “Hubspace Connect” upgrade lets certain switches and dimmers communicate directly with Hubspace-enabled lights without rewiring. “We are incredibly excited to expand the Hubspace portfolio,” Nick Millette, product development merchant for smart home at Home Depot, said in a company post that also flagged partnerships with Kwikset and Texas Instruments. The Home Depot+1
Home-related peers moved in the same direction. Lowe’s rose about 3.7% and Sherwin-Williams gained roughly 3% in afternoon trading.
The stock is still tethered to Home Depot’s own cautious tone on the year ahead. In December, the company projected fiscal 2026 comparable sales — sales at stores open at least a year — to range from flat to up 2%, below the average analyst estimate compiled by LSEG, and said profit growth would be modest.
The next hard catalyst is earnings. Home Depot is scheduled to report fiscal fourth-quarter results on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 9:00 a.m. ET, its investor site shows.
But there is a catch: the housing market does not need to break much to stall spending again. Home Depot has warned that consumer uncertainty and “continued pressure in housing” can hit demand for big-ticket and discretionary projects, which would make a strong start to January look more like positioning than a trend. Reuters
Traders’ near-term focus is Friday, Jan. 9’s U.S. payrolls report for clues on rates, then Home Depot’s Feb. 24 results for a read on whether shoppers are coming back to larger jobs or still keeping projects on hold.
