The Ibex 35 opens the year with a rise of 1% and a new historical maximum at the edge of 17,500 points
This Friday, the Ibex 35 closed the first session of 2026 with an increase of 1.07%, reaching a new all-time high at 17,492.4 points, in a day that will serve as a transition for next week, where the great references will return to move the market. The selective, which this Friday resumed the normality after the end of the year break, continues without respite in its climb and has even surpassed during the negotiation the level of 17,500 integers, although in the last section it has chosen to stay below that level.
The index has already closed 2025 as its best year since 1993, after registering a cumulative revaluation of 49.27% and remaining above 17,000 points, a historical level never reached before by the Madrid indicator. This result occurred in a international context characterized by volatility arising from conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, trade tensions and uncertainties around artificial intelligence (AI).
“The result is a market that no longer looks cheap, with valuations above its historical average, but supported by a clear improvement in profit expectations and by a relatively benign macro environment”, said the director of fund analysis at Tressis, Jorge González Gómez, regarding his vision of the Spanish stock market in these early stages of 2026.
At the international level, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, signed a twelve-month extension of tariff increase which was to come into force this Thursday, January 1, 2026, and which would affect to certain products wood, especially upholstered furniture, kitchen and bathroom vanities.
Within the macroeconomic agenda, this Friday it emerged that the deterioration of the factory activity in the eurozone worsened during the month of December due to the weakening of demand, which pushed the manufacturing PMI index up to 48.8 points, compared to 49.6 the previous month, which represents its worst reading since last March, according to S&P Global data.
Eurozone
In December, industrial performance worsened in several key economies in the euro zone, including Germany (47 points), with its worst reading in ten months; Italy (47.9), at a nine-month low; and Spain (49.6), its lowest in eight months. For its part, the Netherlands (51.1) recorded its lowest in 7 months; while France (50.7) reached his maxim in 42 months.
Within the corporate sphere, the Santander Bank has entered the ‘top 100’ of the companies with the largest market capitalization in the world, according to data collected by ‘Bloomberg’, after exceeding 175 billion dollars (around 149 billion euros) in stock market value.
In this context, at the close of the session the greatest advances in the Madrid index were recorded by Grifols (+4.63%), Acciona Energía (+3.3%), Repsol (+3.05%), Acerinox (+2.69%), Acciona (+2.58%), Sabadell (+2.41%) and Bankinter (+2.33%) and Indra (+2.18%). At the opposite extreme, only eleven stocks have closed with losses, led by Colonial (-2.47%), Merlín Properties (-0.8%) and Mapfre (-0.6%). The main bags European companies have also inaugurated 2026 with progress: Frankfurt has added 0.2%; London 0.2%; Paris 0.56% and Milan 0.96%. For their part, Wall Street indices were trading flat at closing time in the Old Continent.
At the same time, the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil, a reference in Europe, fell by 1.1%, reaching 60.2 dollars, as did the West Texas Intermediate (WTI), a reference in the United States, fell by 1.08%, up to $56.8. In the foreign exchange market, the price of the euro against the dollar stood at 1.1737 ‘greenbacks’, with little variation compared to the day before, while the interest required Spanish 10-year bond has closed at 3.336% after adding half a tenth, with the risk premium with respect to the German bond at 44 points.
For its part, the troy ounce of gold was quoted at $4,320, unchanged compared to the end of 2025, although in the morning it reached above $4,400. At the same time, bitcoin rose 2.4%, to $90,500.
