2025 Recap and 2026 Predictions

Listen on Apple, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.2026 Predictions📈📉Todays newsletter is for forward guidance and optimism. Since my conversation with Mel last week, Ive had some time to build a list of predictions I have for the coming year.* Alberta Votes on their separation referendum and its not even close. While the rhetoric and fiscal considerations of the vote will become a hot issue in the province, the vote ends in a lopsided victory for nay.* We are moving from an era of “Who has the fastest processor?” to an era of “Who has the fastest and biggest memory pipes?” The Memory Wall is the newest mainstream focus as data management and data commute>compute as a result of inference growth, becomes more important.* By summer of 2026 it will be as though the digital world is going through some kind of fast evolution, with some parts of it emitting a huge amount of heat and light and moving with counter-intuitive speed relative to everything else. Great fortunes will be won and lost here, and the powerful engines of our silicon creation will be put to work, further accelerating this economy and further changing things.And yet it will all feel somewhat ghostly, even to practitioners that work at its center. There will be signatures of it in our physical reality - datacenters, supply chain issues for compute and power, the funky AI billboards of San Francisco, offices for startups with bizarre names - but the vast amount of true activity will be occurring both in the digital world, and in the new spaces being built and configured by AI systems for trading with one another - agents, websites meant only for consumption by other AI systems, great and mostly invisible seas of tokens being used for thinking and exchanging information between the silicon minds. * In 2026 we will stop asking Ai to be our copilots and we will begin finding ways to complete our busy work while we sleep. We are still in the waterwheel phase of AI, bolting chatbots onto workflows designed for humans. * Reemergence of software as a trade idea. Markets will care less about the picks and shovels of the data center build out and start fixating on the ROI of the capital deployed. Think AI Agents and efficiencies. This prediction is a bet on the data owners and platform managers in 2026.* 2026 is the year of Basic Robotics and Amazon leads the MAG 7 in % performance for the first time in half a decade. The collision of AI and robotics is the Champagne and cocaine cocktail that will fuel Amazon’s retail margin expansion, catalyzing a 2x increase in the gross merchandise value of its largest business (retail) by 2033, without adding any human workers. Just as Ford’s assembly line slashed automotive production time by 88%, Amazon’s robotics investments have reduced the time from click to ship by 78%. The rest of the Mag 7 capitalizes on the elevation of information (bits) over objects (atoms), while Amazon is leveraging bits to move atoms faster and cheaper.* JPM joins the Trillion Dollar Club and becomes the first financial inside the magnificent 7. Additionally, financials lead the market, along with software and industrials in 2026. * Podcasts finish off Late Night TV - The Late Show with Stephen Colbert employs 200 people, costs $100 million, and makes $60 million. When Colbert shifts to podcasting, he’ll take eight people with him and make just $20 million, but it’ll only cost $5 million to produce. The means of production are being arbitraged. There will be outrage from the creative community, who believe they’re too precious to face disruption.* The Degen Economy Grows and continues to eat Las Vegases lunch. HOOD, COIN, Pollymarket, WealthSimple etc. I predict/believe that prediction markets, 24/7/365 stock markets, tokenization and the international retail investor are a Cambrian explosion of growth for financial markets. While the volatility in these stocks and markets are severe, they have survived the internet bubble, the great financial crisis, COVID and a rising rate environment. The survivors get smarter, and the onramps kept coming. The players in the market are growing. * Narrative Economy becomes the predominant investment theme. You might be wondering, What is the ‘narrative economy’? It is an economy that sits on top of ‘technology’ and the ‘degenerate economy’. The ‘narrative economy’ emerged full throttle in 2024. Storytelling always mattered in public markets and because of technology, ZIRP and politics/policy we now have Memestocks and Memecoins that are ‘storytelling’ first entities. These sit on top of the ‘degenerate economy‘ thats work ~$2 plus trillion (Bitcoin, Solana, HOOD , Fan Duel, Draft Kings, Coinbase). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reformedmillennials.substack.com