US Stock Market Move | NASDAQ rose more than 1%, star technology stocks rose across the board, and US chipmaker AMD rose nearly 5%.

On Friday, the first trading day of 2026, the three major US stock indexes all opened higher, with the Nasdaq rising over 1%. Star tech stocks were up across the board, with American semiconductor company AMD.US up nearly 5%, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. Sponsored ADR (TSM.US) up over 3%, NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US), Alphabet Inc. Class CA (GOOGL.US), and Broadcom Inc. (AVGO.US) all up over 2%, and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) and Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) up nearly 1%. On the news front, economists at Barclays maintained their expectations for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates twice in 2026, with cuts of 25 basis points each in March and June. They believe the risks around this baseline forecast lean towards delaying rate cuts. These economists stated that minutes from the Fed's December policy meeting (where they cut rates by 25 basis points) were consistent with Barclays' expectation that the January meeting would be on hold "as the Federal Open Market Committee needs time to assess the impact of recent rate cuts". Scott Chronert, Citigroup's US stock strategy chief, believes that the current market is in a "prosperous period" rather than a "bubble period". Looking ahead to the new year, he remains optimistic about the market outlook based on strong profit expectations and the upcoming trend of industry sector expansion.