NEW YORK, January 7, 2026, 15:29 (EST) — Regular session
Microsoft (MSFT) shares rose 1.2% to $484.34 in afternoon trading on Wednesday, keeping pace with a renewed bid for big-cap tech. The stock ended Tuesday at $478.51.
The move comes as investors rotate back into stocks tied to artificial intelligence, after recent hand-wringing over stretched valuations. The Nasdaq was up 0.48% and the S&P 500 was up 0.03%, with Microsoft among the AI-linked names leading gains. “Investors have come into 2026 with a similar playbook to last year: Buy tech and forget about it,” Jake Dollarhide, chief executive of Longbow Asset Management, said. Reuters
Fresh labour data also kept expectations for Federal Reserve rate cuts in play, a backdrop that tends to support growth stocks whose profits lie further out. ADP said private payrolls rose 41,000 in December, missing forecasts, and a separate report showed job openings fell to 7.146 million in November.
For Microsoft, the AI story is increasingly colliding with the unglamorous plumbing behind it: power. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator said on Tuesday it would deploy Microsoft technology to help predict and respond to weather-related disruptions, plan transmission lines and speed some operations across a grid that spans 15 U.S. states and parts of Canada. “Such acceleration is critical,” MISO Chief Information and Digital Officer Nirav Shah said, with the statement offering no financial terms. Reuters
Chart watchers say the stock still has work to do after slipping from its highs last year. Shares sit below their 50-day moving average of $494.66 — a medium-term trend marker — and well under the 52-week high of $555.45, leaving the Microsoft stock price forecast sensitive to the next macro or earnings jolt.
The next hard company catalyst is Microsoft’s quarterly update on Azure, its cloud platform that competes with Amazon Web Services and Alphabet’s Google Cloud. Microsoft has not announced the date of its next earnings release, though earnings calendars such as Yahoo Finance list a January 28 report after the market close.
But the setup cuts both ways. A hotter-than-expected jobs print could push bond yields higher and pressure tech valuations, while any sign that AI spending is outrunning revenue gains would revive worries about margins.
The immediate test is the U.S. Employment Situation report for December, due Friday, January 9 at 8:30 a.m. ET.
