NEW YORK, Jan 2, 2026, 11:33 ET
- U.S. stocks opened 2026 higher, led by a rebound in big technology shares.
- Intuit shares fell after an SEC filing showed co-founder Scott Cook sold about $50 million in stock.
- Investors are weighing rate and tariff signals after late-2025 weakness and ahead of next week’s U.S. data.
U.S. stocks rose on Friday, the first trading day of 2026, as investors returned to heavyweight technology names. Intuit fell after a regulatory filing showed co-founder and director Scott Cook sold shares.
The opening moves matter because money managers often reset portfolios at the start of the year, amplifying early swings. Investors are also testing whether the 2025 rally — powered in part by enthusiasm around artificial intelligence — can carry into January.
Wall Street is coming off a late-December pullback that undercut expectations for a “Santa Claus rally,” a seasonal pattern of gains over the last five trading days of December and the first two sessions of January. Trading desks are now watching for fresh catalysts on interest rates and tariffs heading into a new quarter.
At 10:13 a.m. ET, the Dow was down 0.01%, while the S&P 500 rose 0.38% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.75%, according to Reuters. Nvidia rose 2.4% and Broadcom gained 3.1%, while furniture retailers including Wayfair and RH climbed after President Donald Trump delayed some tariff increases. “The next Fed Chair is probably going to be much more dovish than Jerome Powell,” said Dennis Dick, chief market strategist at Stock Trader Network. Reuters
Investing.com said the S&P 500 was up about 0.5% at 9:32 a.m. ET, with the Nasdaq 100 up 1%, as traders leaned back into large-cap technology. It also flagged thin holiday participation and cautioned against reading too much into the first session of the year.
For 2025, the S&P 500 gained 16.39%, the Nasdaq rose 20.36% and the Dow climbed 12.97%, Reuters reported, extending a third straight year of gains. Those returns have left investors debating how much of the market’s valuation rests on continued strength in tech and AI-linked earnings.
Outside the U.S., stocks in Europe and Asia also gained, with indexes in Britain and South Korea hitting records, the Associated Press reported. Oil slipped more than 1% while gold rose, and Treasury yields were little changed in early trading.
Intuit was down 5.3% at $627.14 as of 11:20 a.m. ET, according to market data.
A Form 4 filing — the SEC disclosure used to report insider stock transactions — showed Cook sold a total of 75,000 shares on Dec. 30 at weighted average prices ranging from $669.0754 to $673.9966. The filing put proceeds at about $50.37 million and said the trades were made under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted on Sept. 3, 2025, with Cook holding 5,669,584 shares indirectly through a family trust after the sale.
Rule 10b5-1 plans are pre-set trading arrangements that insiders use to schedule transactions in advance, aiming to reduce concerns that sales are timed around non-public information. Investors often watch insider sales closely at year-end and into January because they can coincide with broader portfolio rebalancing.
Intuit sells TurboTax tax-preparation software, Credit Karma personal-finance products and QuickBooks accounting tools, and it enters January in the heart of the U.S. filing season. Demand for consumer tax software can shift expectations quickly, especially against rivals such as H&R Block.
