Hello fellow investors,
Well, it’s that time of year again. Another year has nearly come and gone, and as usual, it flew by. Hopefully you all made some money along the way. As is tradition for me, this is the time to reflect on the year that was and lay out my expectations and predictions for the year ahead.
But before jumping into my 2026 market predictions, I want to briefly revisit the calls I made for 2025. I do this every year for one simple reason: accountability. Anyone can make bold predictions looking forward. Far fewer are willing to look back and openly discuss what worked, what didn’t, and why. That’s one of my biggest criticisms of many so-called experts you see on CNBC. Plenty of them spent the last three or four years calling for a recession, got it wrong, and yet were never exactly eager to admit it.
Last year, I warned that despite optimism, 2025 would not be a straight line up. After two consecutive strong years for equities, I expected volatility, concentration in a few winners, and a meaningful pullback in the first half of the year. That call turned out to be directionally correct.
What I Got Really Right in 2025
First, the pullback.
I predicted a significant cyclical pullback early in the year, likely triggered by macro or geopolitical stress. That is exactly what happened. The market sold off sharply in the first half of the year, initially driven by renewed China concerns, DeepSeek related shocks, and later intensified by tariffs. Sentiment flipped quickly from optimism to fear, testing investor conviction. For me, this was a clear buy the dip moment as I was bullish on big tech, and I did exactly that when it happened.
Second, Palantir.
I stayed bullish on PLTR even after a massive run, arguing that the market was underestimating the software phase of the AI revolution and Palantir’s unique positioning. That also played out. PLTR continued higher, supported not only by commercial execution, but by its deepening relationship with the US administration. Government ties, defense priorities, and efficiency initiatives all acted as tailwinds exactly as expected.
Where I Was Wrong
I also want to be very clear about where I missed. I was right about currency debasement emerging as a dominant macro theme, but I was wrong about which asset would benefit the most. I expected Bitcoin to be the primary beneficiary of the debasement trade. Instead, gold, and even silver, led the move, pushing to new all time highs. Bitcoin and most Bitcoin related assets ultimately underperformed throughout 2025.
How did I do overall in 2025?
While the broader market is up roughly 18% year to date, my portfolio is up about 77% year to date. So it was the third year in a row of nearly 80% annual gains. I am not complaining.
I am not sharing this to pat myself on the back, but to frame how I think about markets. I am not a permabull. I am not a doomer. I focus on cycles, incentives, capital flows, and where narratives eventually collide with reality. 2025 reinforced several core beliefs I carry into 2026:
Volatility creates opportunity
Capital concentrates into winners
Macro shocks matter more than narratives
And most importantly, being mostly right is more than enough if risk is managed properly
With that context, we can now look forward.
Below are my market predictions for 2026, shaped directly by what 2025 taught us.
My Market Predictions for 2026
Going into 2026, I see a market shaped less by optimism and more by pressure, adaptation, and capital migration. This will not be a smooth year, but it will be a very investable one if you understand where the stress points are and where money is likely to flow.
Global Events That Will Drive 2026 Market Sentiment
In my view, the single biggest driver of global market sentiment in 2026 will be Europe, and unfortunately, the story will not be a positive one.
I expect a deepening European debt crisis, with France at the center. This will dominate headlines on CNBC and Bloomberg and weigh on global markets, drawing comparisons to earlier sovereign stress episodes like the Greek debt crisis. In France’s case, the issue is structural rather than cyclical. Public spending has climbed to nearly 60 percent of GDP, crowding out the private sector and suppressing growth. Across the broader eurozone, I expect economic growth to remain weak. As yields rise and confidence deteriorates, capital will continue to leave Europe in search of stability, weakening the euro, strengthening the US dollar, and reinforcing the US as a relative safe haven for global capital.
At the same time, I believe the Russia-Ukraine war finally comes to an end. This would be a meaningful shift for markets. Energy, fertilizer, wheat, and natural gas prices should fall materially once peace is established. While this does not resolve Europe’s underlying debt and governance problems, it does provide real deflationary relief on the cost side, particularly for households and industrial producers.
The interaction of these two forces creates an unusual setup. Monetary inflation driven by ECB intervention collides with commodity driven deflation following the end of the war. This tension is likely to produce elevated volatility, but also clear opportunities for investors who understand the drivers.
As sovereign stress increases, the ECB will be forced to print, keeping inflation elevated even as growth slows. Unemployment across the eurozone is likely to rise further, especially as automation accelerates and corporate margins come under pressure. Even with lower energy costs, Europe will struggle to restore confidence.
This is not a call for collapse, but it is a call for continued underperformance. I expect European equities to lag US markets again in 2026.
The United States and Equity Markets
Despite elevated global stress, I expect US equities to perform relatively well. There will be political headwinds, including renewed uncertainty around tariff policy following the upcoming Supreme Court decision and the risk of another government shutdown in the first quarter. Even so, the US remains far more attractive from a growth and capital allocation standpoint than any other major region.
I see the Nasdaq delivering roughly a 5 to 10 percent return in 2026. This will not be driven by multiple expansion, but by margin expansion. AI, automation, and software driven efficiency continue to push profitability higher, particularly among large technology companies. Importantly, I expect these AI driven efficiencies to begin spreading beyond tech into sectors like financials and healthcare, where cost structures are ripe for disruption.
Monetary policy will add to this volatile growth backdrop. A newly appointed Fed chair (potentially Kevin Hassett), is likely to pursue a more accommodative stance, pushing rates lower in an effort to support growth and align with political pressure from the Trump administration.
At the same time, rising unemployment will increasingly become a political issue. AI driven job displacement will accelerate, and governments will respond in familiar fashion, through fiscal spending. I expect the US to roll out targeted programs and funding aimed at workers displaced by automation. This should act as a short term stabilizer for consumption, while further widening the gap between asset owners and wage earners.
The Biggest Industry of 2026
I’m calling it now.. I expect 2026 to be the year Wall Street fully wakes up to the energy trade. As AI adoption accelerates and data center capacity continues to scale, media coverage will increasingly focus on a basic but unavoidable constraint: computing power requires electricity, and far more of it than most investors currently appreciate. This is a is a real, physical bottleneck that will shape capital allocation decisions across markets.
Not all energy sources are equally suited to meet this demand. Intermittent generation alone will not be enough. The market will begin to distinguish between energy sources that can provide reliable, scalable base load power and those that cannot. This is where nuclear, solar, and natural gas stand out. Nuclear offers long term, carbon free base load generation. Natural gas provides flexibility and reliability during peak demand. Solar continues to benefit from falling costs and improved efficiency, especially when paired with storage and grid upgrades.
As this reality becomes more widely understood, I expect a meaningful rotation of capital into energy equities. These companies move from being viewed as legacy or cyclical plays to becoming critical infrastructure providers for the AI and electrification era. In that environment, energy stocks are positioned to become some of the strongest performers in the market.
AI, data centers, electrification, and reshoring all require dependable power at scale. The market has spent years obsessing over software and semiconductors. In 2026, it starts pricing in the energy layer that makes all of it possible.
I will be doing a deeper dive into specific energy investments I plan to make, so stay tuned for that in the coming weeks.
How Will My High Conviction Trades Perform?
In my view, the AI trade is far from over, but it is clearly entering a new phase. What began as a narrow, Nvidia driven hardware rally several years ago is now spreading across adjacent industries and the infrastructure that supports them, exactly as I outlined earlier. As this transition continues, I expect renewed attention and controversy around OpenAI, particularly as valuation discussions intensify ahead of any potential IPO. If that process moves forward, it will likely reignite speculation across the broader AI complex, influencing sentiment around Nvidia, Google, Palantir, and the data center ecosystem as a whole. We are talking about a potential trillion dollar valuation for a company reportedly generating around 20 billion dollars in annualized revenue. That alone will be enough to fuel debate, regardless of how the numbers ultimately shake out.
As a result, 2026 will almost certainly be marked by heavy IPO hype around names like OpenAI and SpaceX, both widely rumored to be preparing for public listings. While these are undeniably world class companies, I have little interest in participating at public market valuations that are likely to price in years of flawless execution. History has not been kind to investors who buy into peak enthusiasm.
Instead, I believe more grounded, enterprise focused IPOs could quietly outperform. Two companies I am watching closely are Databricks and ClickHouse. Both operate deeper in the data and infrastructure layer of the AI stack, and in my view offer a more attractive risk adjusted profile than the highly publicized consumer and platform stories.
At the same time, hyperscalers will continue to consolidate power. Scale, capital, and access to compute matter more than ever. As AI infrastructure becomes increasingly capital intensive, smaller players will struggle to compete, further reinforcing the dominance of the largest technology platforms.
When it comes to my three largest positions, here is how I see them setting up in 2026.
NVDA: Reaches new all time highs as demand for its chips remains relentless. The TPU scare ultimately proves insignificant, and Nvidia continues to sit at the center of the AI buildout. The company remains the primary enabler of large scale model training and inference, and I see the stock pushing toward $250 in 2026.
PLTR: Stabilizes around the 200 level for much of the year. This is not a parabolic move, but a maturation phase. Palantir transitions from a momentum driven trade into a core AI infrastructure holding, supported by sustained commercial growth and expanding government demand. Volatility will remain, with potential ranges between $150 and $250, but I expect the stock to settle in the low $200s as the business grows into its valuation.
NBIS: This is my higher beta conviction and I have covered this stock extensively on my YouTube channel. I expect Nebius to reach $200 in 2026 as more of its Token Factory software gains traction and its data center buildout becomes real, not theoretical. They will announce new data center builds across the US and Europe and this is where the market will reward execution. Their projected revenue for 2026 looks amazing and I am also expecting NBIS to be rewarded significantly during the IPO process of Clickhouse as NBIS currently owns a 28% stake in them. Considering this is currently trading under $100 per share I am expecting this to at least double in 2026.
The Currency Debasement Trade
When it comes to the currency debasement trade, I expect gold to continue grinding higher, particularly during periods of market stress tied to European debt concerns, renewed tariff tensions, and the risk of another government shutdown. Lowering rates and a return to quantitative easing in the US, and potentially in the eurozone, should further support gold as a hedge during bouts of volatility.
As for Bitcoin, I expect it to rebound and move back above $100,000 early in the year, largely tracking strength in the Nasdaq and broader risk assets. As liquidity conditions improve, Bitcoin is likely to once again behave as a high beta expression of risk appetite rather than a traditional safe haven. Over time, it can still benefit from the broader currency debasement narrative, but 2025 made one thing clear: Bitcoin does not trade like gold. Gold remains the true defensive hedge, while Bitcoin functions more as a speculative, liquidity sensitive asset that thrives when financial conditions ease.
Final Thoughts
2026 is unlikely to feel comfortable. It will be choppy, noisy, and defined by elevated volatility. As more retail traders gravitate toward options and leveraged strategies, and as markets like the Nasdaq move toward extended trading hours, price swings are likely to become even more pronounced, especially in the high beta AI names like Palantir, Nebius and Tesla among others.
If that environment feels overwhelming, there is nothing wrong with keeping things simple. Dollar cost averaging into broad based ETFs like SPY or QQQ remains a perfectly sensible approach for most investors.
For those who kept their composure and performed well in 2025, however, this type of market can present real opportunity. Staying stoic, calm, and disciplined in the face of volatility is often where the true edge is found. And if you are a stock picker like me, you should be able to use these swings to accumulate high conviction names at attractive prices.
I wish you all great health and wealth in the New Year.
