IBM Soars On Resurfaced Trump Clip, Barclays Buy Rating As MoMo Rally Accelerates

IBM shares jumped as much as 15% in premarket trading after Bloomberg described a recirculated video of President Trump stating that the stock is "going to go up a lot more."

The clip, reposted by Polymarket Money on Saturday evening, appears to have fueled another leg higher in what has already been an eye-popping, multi-week rally.

In the clip, dated December 10, Trump boasted that IBM CEO Arvind Krishna had "taken the stock from a rather low price to a very nice price."

"I won't say high because I'm sure you're going to say it's going to go up a lot more," Trump added.

Trump says $IBM is “going to go up a lot more.”pic.twitter.com/KgzV0qy19j

— Polymarket Money (@PolymarketMoney) May 31, 2026

IBM logged the largest monthly gain in May since October 2002.

Another overnight catalyst was Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow, who initiated coverage of IBM with an Overweight rating and a $350 price target.

Lenschow said that IBM has built a more stable growth engine around its defensive software portfolio, adding that the bull case goes well beyond quantum computing hype.

Earlier today, UBS analyst Robert Ruple provided clients with a few reasons for the recent bounce in software stocks:

Persistent AI enthusiasm has driven one of the strongest two months of performance on record for the S&P with Tech/S5INFT up 14.3% m/m, shrugging off the US/Iran stalemate and stubborn inflation. While semiconductor stocks remain the clear leaders with SOX up 81% in 2026, a key question emerging late week is what's driving the rebound in software, which was up 9.9% w/w, which appears to be extending into Monday morning, tied to comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushing back on the "Saaspocalyse" concerns (Bloomberg).

Software flows on the desk were slightly better to buy late last week, albeit skewed towards those in the consumption bucket on limited supply but based on what the UBS prime brokerage desk has seen, most of the price action has leaned in favor of covering.

Clearly the solid beat/raise from Snowflake catalyzed the sector to an extent, but aside from a handful of disappointments, most of the results were largely inline to better than feared. That said, many of the recent software laggards have quietly outperformed of late, with presumably some level of rotational forces at play. Also, a couple of people Friday claimed there was heavy retail buying in software because social media caught on to President Trump's purchase of ServiceNow stock, which is bit odd because this was disclosed back on May 15. Additionally, part of the move in IBM on Monday is being attributed to a video of Trump praising the company's CEO (Bloomberg) and discussing the stock back in December that was recirculated via social media.

In a recent note, Citi analyst Fatima Boolani said that IBM's software and hardware remain deeply embedded "across the most critical points of the world's largest, most complex IT infrastructures."