Influence of Major Companies: A Bank of America analysis highlights that just 20 companies significantly impact global stock market performance, with the top 10 S&P 500 firms accounting for about 40% of the index's 16% gain this year.
Key Stocks Identified: The "Most Important Stocks" identified by Bank of America include Microsoft, Eli Lilly, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which exhibit strong characteristics of risk, quality growth, and momentum.
Performance of Microsoft and Eli Lilly: Microsoft has seen a 15% increase in shares in 2025, driven by its Azure cloud business, while Eli Lilly reached a record high share price and a $1 trillion market cap, largely due to demand for its weight loss drug.
Momentum in AI Stocks: Other notable stocks with positive price and earnings momentum include AI leaders Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and AppLovin, indicating a strong outlook for these companies heading into the new year.
Wall Street analysts forecast AMD stock price to rise over the next 12 months. According to Wall Street analysts, the average 1-year price target for AMD is 284.10 USD with a low forecast of 200.00 USD and a high forecast of 377.00 USD. However, analyst price targets are subjective and often lag stock prices, so investors should focus on the objective reasons behind analyst rating changes, which better reflect the company's fundamentals.
36 Analyst Rating
Wall Street analysts forecast AMD stock price to rise over the next 12 months. According to Wall Street analysts, the average 1-year price target for AMD is 284.10 USD with a low forecast of 200.00 USD and a high forecast of 377.00 USD. However, analyst price targets are subjective and often lag stock prices, so investors should focus on the objective reasons behind analyst rating changes, which better reflect the company's fundamentals.
27 Buy
9 Hold
0 Sell
Strong Buy
Current: 249.800
Low
200.00
Averages
284.10
High
377.00
Current: 249.800
Low
200.00
Averages
284.10
High
377.00
Bernstein
Stacy Rasgon
Market Perform
maintain
$200 -> $225
2026-01-21
New
Reason
Bernstein
Stacy Rasgon
Price Target
$200 -> $225
AI Analysis
2026-01-21
New
maintain
Market Perform
Reason
Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon raised the firm's price target on AMD to $225 from $200 and keeps a Market Perform rating on the shares ahead of quarterly results. The firm is adjusting estimates to incorporate better server / weaker PC assumptions. Bernstein now models AMD's Q4 2025 at $9.7B/$1.31, up slightly from $9.6B/$1.30 prior, and mostly in line with consensus at $9.6B/$1.32.
Needham
Buy
maintain
$28 -> $30
2026-01-20
New
Reason
Needham
Price Target
$28 -> $30
2026-01-20
New
maintain
Buy
Reason
Needham raised the firm's price target on Riot Platforms (RIOT) to $30 from $28 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. The firm cites the company having signed a 25MW lease with AMD (AMD) at its newly acquired Rockdale site where it previously did not have full land ownership, and while the lease economics are significantly lower than peers, the yield on cost is attractive as capex is expected to be only $3.6m/MW, the analyst tells investors in a research note.
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BTIG
Buy
maintain
$28
2026-01-16
Reason
BTIG
Price Target
$28
2026-01-16
maintain
Buy
Reason
BTIG reiterates a Buy rating on Riot Platforms (RIOT) with a $28 price target after the company announced a colocation lease with AMD (AMD). While the pricing on a per megawatt year basis is lower than previous contracts seen, Riot is paying significantly less in capex than the market standard as it is leveraging existing infrastructure at the site, the analyst tells investors in a research note. BTIG says that with the Rockdale land now owned and soon to be generating high performance compute revenue, Riot has two blue chip data center locations with roughly 1 gigawatt of additional IT capacity to be contracted. It sees the company becoming the "dominant" HPC infrastructure provider. Riot is a top pick in the first half of 2026 at BTIG.
Cantor Fitzgerald
Overweight
maintain
$25 -> $31
2026-01-16
Reason
Cantor Fitzgerald
Price Target
$25 -> $31
2026-01-16
maintain
Overweight
Reason
Cantor Fitzgerald raised the firm's price target on Riot Platforms (RIOT) to $31 from $25 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. Riot on Friday announced it has acquired the land of its Rockdale location and signed a data center lease agreement with AMD (AMD), which could be the first of many deals that Riot could land, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Cantor thinks the likelihood of AMD excercising its options for 175 MW of additional capacity will increase as the capacity begins to come online.
About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. is a global semiconductor company. The Company is focused on high-performance computing, graphics and visualization technologies. Its segments include Data Center, Client and Gaming, and Embedded. Data Center segment includes artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators, microprocessors (CPUs) for servers, graphics processing units (GPUs), accelerated processing units (APUs), data processing units (DPUs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), smart network interface Cards (SmartNICs) and Adaptive system-on-Chip (SoC) products for data centers. Client and Gaming segment includes CPUs, APUs, chipsets for desktops and notebooks, discrete GPUs, and semi-custom SoC products and development services. Embedded segment includes embedded CPUs, GPUs, APUs, FPGAs, system on modules (SOMs), and Adaptive SoC products. It markets and sells its products under the AMD trademark. Its products include AMD EPYC, AMD Ryzen, AMD Ryzen PRO, Virtex UltraScale+, and others.
About the author
Emily J. Thompson
Emily J. Thompson, a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) with 12 years in investment research, graduated with honors from the Wharton School. Specializing in industrial and technology stocks, she provides in-depth analysis for Intellectia’s earnings and market brief reports.
