NEW YORK, January 1, 2026, 09:59 ET — Market closed
- Palantir shares last closed down 1.7% at $177.75 in the final session of 2025
- U.S. stock markets are closed Thursday for the New Year’s Day holiday
- A fresh Wedbush note kept Palantir on its 2026 AI picks list with a $230 target
Palantir Technologies Inc (PLTR.O) shares closed down 1.7% at $177.75 on Wednesday, after ending Tuesday at $180.84, Nasdaq data showed. U.S. markets were closed on Thursday for the New Year’s Day holiday.
The timing matters for Palantir investors because the stock has become a fast-moving proxy for sentiment around artificial intelligence-linked software names. Holiday closures can concentrate flows into the next open, magnifying moves that might otherwise play out over several sessions.
With the calendar turning and trading paused on Thursday, investors return on Friday with little time to digest year-end positioning, research notes and macro headlines separately. That can make the first sessions of 2026 feel sharper for volatile momentum names.
Palantir’s retreat tracked a broader pullback on Wednesday, when the S&P 500 fell 0.74% and the Nasdaq dropped 0.76% in thin holiday trading, Reuters reported. Investors took profits after a year in which enthusiasm for AI-focused stocks helped lift major indexes to strong annual gains.
Dan Ives at Wedbush reiterated a $230 price target on Palantir and flagged it as one of his top AI picks for 2026, alongside Microsoft, Tesla and CrowdStrike, a Business Insider report said. A price target is an analyst’s estimate of where a stock should trade. “Demand for Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform remains “unprecedented,”” Ives said. Business Insider
Palantir sells software that helps governments and companies combine large pools of data and run analytics to support operational decisions. Its Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, is pitched as a way to deploy AI tools on a customer’s own data with controls around access and security.
For traders, Palantir’s direction on the reopen may say as much about risk appetite as it does about company fundamentals. When rate expectations move or investors rotate out of high-growth software, richly valued names tend to react first.
Before Friday’s session, investors will parse weekly jobless claims and a construction spending report due at 8:30 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. ET, respectively, the New York Fed’s release calendar shows. The same calendar lists the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing survey for Monday at 10:00 a.m. ET.
Palantir’s next earnings report is listed for Feb. 2 after the close on Yahoo Finance’s earnings calendar. “After the close” refers to the period after the 4 p.m. ET end of regular U.S. trading, when companies often release results.
Investors will be looking for the company’s tone on 2026 demand, particularly how quickly commercial customers scale AIP deployments and whether government-related growth remains steady. Any change in margin commentary or hiring plans can have an outsized impact in a stock priced for continued strong execution.
On Wednesday, Palantir traded between $181.53 and $177.25 and finished near the bottom of that range, historical pricing data show. Traders often treat the prior day’s low as a near-term line in the sand when markets reopen.
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