January 26, 2026

The market drifted through narrow trading Friday, as a zigzag week punctuated by threats and reversal of directions ended with a quiet and tentative close.

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The S&P 500 was basically flat and edged up by less than 0.1% but still notched a second straight week with a modest loss. The Dow dipped 285 points, which means that these two items ended lower for the third week out of four, and re-enforces the overall neutral turn of the market lately.

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The Nasdaq did better with a 65-point gain to 23,501 after some technology stocks did better, such as NVDA, META and MSFT, the latter two having done poorly in recent weeks.

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The majority of stocks fell, and INTC did poorly after a huge run higher lately and fell by 17%. The chip company reported better results for the end of 2025 than analysts expected. But investors focused instead on its forecast for the first three months of this year, which fell short of expectations.

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Its Chief Financial Officer said shortages of supplies are affecting the entire industry, and it expects available supply to hit a bottom early this year before improving in the spring and beyond.

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Moves in the U.S. bond market were relatively modest following sharp swings early in the week, but other markets still showed potential signs of nervousness.

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The U.S. dollar’s value fell against the Japanese yen, Swiss franc and other currencies had slid sharply early in the week after the President threatened 10% tariffs on European countries for opposing his push to own Greenland.

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That drop, paired with declines for prices for U.S. Treasury bonds, had suggested global investors may be backing out of U.S. markets. But some relief came on Wednesday after Trump announced “the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland” and called off the tariffs, though few details are available about it.

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Gold’s price, meanwhile, rose to another record Friday and neared $5,000 per ounce in a signal that investors are still looking for something safer to own. It is already up nearly 15% for the year so far.

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COF sank 7.6% after reporting a weaker profit for the end of 2025 than analysts expected. It also said it was buying Brex, which helps businesses issue corporate credit cards, for $5.15 billion in cash and stock. This downfall really negatively affected other financial issues, which had done well lately and were the main reason for the weakness in the Dow.

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On the winning side was CSX, which climbed 2.4% even though the railroad reported a weaker than expected profit. Some analysts highlighted the company’s forecast for how much more operating profit it expects to retain from each $1 of revenue during 2026.

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In the bond market, Treasury yields inched lower as prices for U.S. government bonds rose.

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A survey of U.S. consumers said expectations for inflation in the upcoming year improved to 4%. That is the lowest such reading in a year, according to the University of Michigan’s survey, even though it remains well above the 2% inflation that the Federal Reserve targets.

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That kind of improvement could help avoid a worst-case scenario the Fed has been desperate to avoid, one where expectations for high inflation trigger a vicious cycle of behavior that only worsens inflation.

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Overall sentiment among U.S. consumers was also a touch stronger than economists expected. That could help keep them spending and the main area of growth for the economy doing better. A separate preliminary report from S&P Global suggested growth is continuing for U.S. business activity.

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The yield of the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.23% from 4.26% late Thursday.

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The Fed’s next chance to move the short-term interest rate it controls will come on Wednesday at 2pm, but the widespread expectation is that it will hold steady.

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In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe after rising across much of Asia.

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Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 0.3% after the Bank of Japan kept its key interest rate unchanged, as many investors expected. The central bank has been slowly pulling its policy rate higher from below zero and had raised it to 0.75% in December.

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Global markets have calmed after struggling with a quick surge for long-term government bond yields in Japan early in the week. The move higher came on worries that Japan’s Prime Minister might do something that would add heavily to the government’s already big debt.

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Helping to reverse things to the upside on Wednesday was an announcement from the President that said the U.S. had reached “the framework of a future deal over Greenland” and this rescinded the tariffs that had been scheduled to resume on February 1st.

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This “agreement” was obviously due to the severe decline of the market the day before and now everyone will wait to see what this involves.

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The supposed Greenland deal does not address the growing mutual distrust between the U.S. and Europe’s responsibility to each other. One sign of this distrust was the lack of a dollar rally, and the continued interest in gold and its neighbors, in addition to gains in defense stocks.

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The two big events this week will be the Fed’s announcement of any potential interest rate cuts on Wednesday and the consensus is for nothing done this time.

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Earnings reports will be huge with the following lineup: today – NUE; Tuesday – AAL, FIVE, GM, JBLU, NEE, NOG, UNP, Dow components BA, UNG; Wednesday – ADP, CHWR, GEV, GD, Dow components IBM, MSFT, plus META, TSLA; Thursday – Dow components AAPL, CAT, MAC, V plus NSC, VLO; Friday – Dow components AXP, CVX, V plus XOM.

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Economic reports will see: today – November durable goods orders; Tuesday – January consumer confidence; Thursday – November factory orders, November trade balance; Friday – December P.P.I.