This transcript has been automatically generated.

Kathryn Toope: Welcome to Barenaked Money, the podcast where we strip down the complex world of finance to its bare essentials with your hosts, Josh Sheluk and Colin White, portfolio managers with Verecan Capital Management Inc.

Colin White: Welcome to 2026. We’re gonna give you everything you need to know to survive the coming apocalypse and all the secrets that all of the really rich people are doing, everything you need to do to survive what’s gonna be a disastrous, calamitous 2026. How did do, Josh? Did sell that good enough?

Josh Sheluk: How do you know what I’m gonna talk about with all my predictions?

Colin White: Oh, I’m just trying get people’s attention. See, the story begins with getting people’s attention, and then we can let them down.

Josh Sheluk: Bait and switch.

Colin White: Yes. Exactly.

Josh Sheluk: Alright. I like it.

Colin White: So you’re sitting there with a list. I can’t wait, Josh. I I can’t as for those that are gonna accuse us of being scripted, I have literally no idea what Josh has written down. He has no idea what I’ve got to come. So you’re gonna get a raw reaction here.

Josh Sheluk: Yep. As usual, I have some predictions for the coming year. They are not investable predictions, just to put the disclaimer up there for everybody. We try to treat predictions with a little bit of ridicule because of how useless most predictions are, but you can usually find a glimmer of reality to the predictions that I’m making. But again, no investment ideas should be made based off of these predictions.

Colin White: In fact, the reason we put this out is for people who are looking for investable predictions can waste their time here and therefore not consume bad information and go make investment decisions. So, you know, we’re actually just trying to absorb your time so you don’t go out and spend it doing something that will cause yourself harm.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. We’re really like the satire of prediction podcasts, I think. If

Colin White: the onion did predictions, I think that might look something like this.

Josh Sheluk: Perfect. All right. So my first prediction for 2026. Clarity is coming on AI capital expenditures. What I mean by that, so 2025 and to some extent 2024, really characterized by economically and market wise by literally hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on building out AI capabilities, data centers and everything that goes along with those, the chips, the cooling, the facilities, the real estate, etcetera, etcetera.

What we don’t know yet is whether these hundreds of billions of dollars invested are going to pay off. Early indications are maybe, but I am a bit skeptical myself. But I think what we will see through at some point through this year is more clarity on whether this payoff is happening or whether it’s not.

Colin White: You equivocated there. You said more clarity. Okay. Yes. I will give you more clarity, but you you announced clarity and I was going, wow.

That’s a high bar. I I think that, you know, we are still more than a year out of really sorting out what the Jesus we’re actually doing. And I’m going based on the fact there’s still a market for any stupid idea somebody comes up with. There is still money flying at any idea that comes out out, whether it’s so right now, we’re in the idea generation phase where people are just throwing money at the top. That has got to die out.

More of that money’s gotta go away before we could actually boil it down and see what’s at the bottom of the pot. And I think that there’s more than a year’s worth of of of road ahead for stuff on on on that front. But I’ll I will also go on record and say that more than 50%, you can write this one down, more than 50% of the initial investment into the various forms of AI is going to disappear in the next eighteen months. What I did right there? We’re not gonna hold myself accountable in twelve.

I bought myself an extra six months, and then we’ll forget about it, and I’m good.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. We’re actually not doing a midyear podcast at that time to confirm or or or deny whether that’s true. But, yeah, look. I I think he could be right. It could take longer for the story to play out.

I I think I don’t know. Like, what what inning are we in? Somewhere in the the middle of the ballgame, somewhere between the four and the sixth, something like that?

Colin White: See, there’s an important disconnect here. I think we’re probably in the mid to late innings from actually what the technology is capable of doing, but we’re in the early innings of people being stupid about it. Like, I think that people are gonna continue to be stupid about it. Like, they’re still catching up. The technology is more well formed, but people are still chasing the idea.

I think the idea is still in the early innings. I think people are willing to throw money at it. I I think that aspect of things is still early innings.

Josh Sheluk: I mean, can’t really measure any of this stuff or quantify any of it, a lot of it that we’re talking about, but I I would kind of think that the AI technology, we’re at the early innings of of what that’s going to be. Because I think we kind of know what it is, but we don’t really know how it’s gonna be used and how it’s gonna progress and how we’re gonna employ it to the best of our abilities and how it’s gonna affect productivity and all these things. Think that’s like a ten year story and we’re like a couple years into it.

Colin White: Yeah. I guess that’s more referencing some of this early build out that we’ve seen in in data centers and chip development and stuff like that. And, you know, the the that that kind of first tranche, you’re right. The the use cases for it. I think the use cases for it are gonna continue.

You know? So you can also almost break this into three groups. Like, what’s it gonna get used for? Is the backbone infrastructure there and what are people actually hunting? Yeah.

There’s three three different aspects of this. Yeah.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. We could probably make this whole podcast on AI based predictions because it’s there’s there’s so many things happening in that world right now, but I do wanna move on to my second prediction. And I think I’m more convinced that this will happen than any other predictions that I’m going to make. Prediction markets, so things like Polymarket and Kelsi, will explode in popularity and reach this year. We’re just seeing some of a bit of a regulatory shift on allowing these things to really kind of hit the mainstream.

And I think it’s just going to explode. We’ve seen sports betting when it was allowed and when it’s legalized kind of on a state by state, province by province basis over the past several years. That market’s exploded in North America. Prediction markets are next. And I think that this is a terrible thing because it gives people the potential to bet on all kinds of things that they shouldn’t bet on.

Maybe they shouldn’t bet on anything, but this is just adding to the list of of the multitude of things that they shouldn’t be betting on that they will be able to bet on.

Colin White: You’re saying it’s gonna explode in popularity this year? Yes. That that’s your prediction. Okay. I’m gonna add to your prediction.

I think you’re right, and I think it’s gonna explode and also attract enough regulatory oversight that it will begin to choke itself to death by the end of the year. Similar to how we saw, like, online illegal online gambling and things like that where they shut down the money movements and all the other ways that the regulators went after it. I think that, you know, we’re gonna see the Phoenix rise to the sun, and I think that it’s gonna get to a point where the regulatory reaction I’m get I’m getting really optimistic here. It’s gonna be quick enough. I’m saying they’ve already said this sent the army out in this direction.

So I’m saying the regulators are already coming for this.

Josh Sheluk: I think you’re delusional that they would pivot that that quickly. The legalized sports gambling

Colin White: Oh, no. Yeah. Sports gambling. Yeah. Sports gambling.

Yeah. Because alright. So I would differentiate and maybe you can educate me here. The polymarket stuff, the government doesn’t take a rake off that. Right?

Josh Sheluk: No. That that’s a really good question, actually.

Colin White: Sports betting is around forever because the government’s making money on it. Unless polymarket okay. Well, here’s a bit here’s a more detailed prediction. Unless polymarket finds a way to let the government get their something something, the family’s gonna shut them down. Like, their their money movement’s gonna get stopped, and, you know, they’re gonna they’re gonna get choked out.

Are they gonna find a a creative enough way to to get a little something something to to the government to to to make it worth their while? That that’s gonna be the key for next year.

Josh Sheluk: I know that that’s an interesting point because actually now I’m thinking the reason they’re working towards regulating this stuff is because they’re just gonna start taking a rake off of it too. And that that wouldn’t surprise me at all. I think that it’s like even a whole bunch of the bets that are on these markets are sports bets. So there must either already be some type of cut for the government or it’s going to be happening sooner rather than later. But I do wanna highlight some really important things that you can bet on, Colin, on these markets.

Just I was perusing this morning, as much as I’m making fun of it, there are some really important things that you should be able to bet on.

Colin White: You’re building this up big, buddy. You’re building this So up

Josh Sheluk: just as as an example, who will die in stranger things season five? We definitely need to be able to wager on that. Logan Paul’s Pikachu illustrator sale price. I don’t even know what that means, but you can bet on it. The number of Elon Musk tweets between December 23 and December 30, you can bet on that.

So don’t get me wrong, Colin. A lot of the bets are ridiculous, but there’s some that make total sense like those ones.

Colin White: Elon can read that and go, okay. What’s the over under? That’s the most easily manipulated thing in the history of manipulation. I mean, as somebody who doesn’t gamble and listen. I can’t claim any Hyell Moore ground.

My brain is just not wired to accept giving away money. I don’t have fun at it. I’ve never had fun at it from from a very, very young age. I just don’t get it. So this is all completely escapes me.

But when you look at something like, you know, these things here, which is so clearly and easily manipulated, Come on. Like, tell me my my species isn’t here. Tell me this is not the room we’re living in right now.

Josh Sheluk: That’s the crazy part of this is is so many of these things. And I don’t know that there’s any guardrails to avoid Elon Musk putting money on a certain number of tweets and then going out and benefiting from that. And I don’t know Elon personally, but certainly he doesn’t seem to be the most Guardrail aware? That’s a great way to put it. Individual that’s out there.

Yeah. So, and we saw with, say it was Coinbase’s quarterly earnings call about a month ago. And there were a bunch of Polymarket bets on what words he would use on his earnings call, the CEO. And he just went through the list and literally read everyone verbatim from the betting market, the prediction market, so you could check them all off the list. So who knows whether he had money on that or not, or whether his daughter’s boyfriend had money on it or something.

And it’s it’s so ripe for manipulation.

Colin White: Alright. So, Josh, I think we owe our our our listenership a bit more of an explanation of what a poly market is. I think that we kinda jumped in assuming that there’s there was an understanding that of what a Polymarket is. So Polymarket one zero one, like, is it a website?

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. So it’s it’s a platform. You could call a website, an app, whatever. There and there’s multiple now. Polymarket’s one of them.

Kelshi’s another one that’s that’s fairly popular. But it allows you to essentially bat or wager on certain outcomes, and we’ll call them real world outcomes. Outcomes like, yeah, like what happens in an episode of Stranger Things or what happens with an election result. Or I was looking there’s a whole bunch of political ones on there like, does China invade Taiwan in the next couple of years? So you can bet on real world events with your literally betting on it.

Whether this thing happens, yes or no, you can put money on that. How many Elon Musk’s tweets happened during this week? You can bet on the number, like, is it between three and four hundred or four and five hundred, which by the way is an insane number of tweets in a week. I don’t know how that guy has time for that. But so so these are the sort of you can you can put wagers on real world events happening or not.

Colin White: Part of my concern is we just directed a whole bunch of people to go check that website out. We may have, like, lost a couple more souls, but I thought it was important for the story of us mocking it that that people understood exactly what we are mocking because that is just beyond absurd. I did the whole premise. I mean, actually, you know what? We we’ve started to see the potential unraveling of sports betting with the arrests in the NBA Yeah.

For for game fixer.

Josh Sheluk: There’s probably gonna be some curbs put on it because the fact that you can bet on how many rebounds the thirteenth player on the Toronto can have next game is is kind of insane.

Colin White: It’s really manipulable, right, when you get that far down.

Josh Sheluk: That’s what we’re seeing. Right? So some of the more fringe players that can manipulate things like that. Now it’s always been I guess this this has probably all always existed. So the counter argument is that it’s just bringing some of the manipulation into plain sight.

But no matter what, it’s the average person is not making money on this stuff, which is the sad part. That’s I think the punchline here.

Colin White: The house wins, the house wins.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. So moving on. So my third projection, speculative investments will be punished this year. So you kind of alluded to this last podcast that we did, the 2025 recap, the day trader, the do it yourself or the speculative type of investments, whether it doesn’t really matter who’s doing it, whether it’s the individual or the institution, Those things have done quite well through 2025, up until maybe the last few months where you saw some cracks in the crypto market. But unprofitable companies have done extremely well this year.

Anything that has AI attached to it in any way, shape or form has done quite well. Something like quantum computing that doesn’t even really have any revenues at this moment has done very well as an investment idea. No revenue companies, companies that don’t have revenue period have done well this year. And I think this will end in 2026. I don’t know when.

I don’t know how. Some of it’s turned over a little bit with some of the crypto and Altcoin stuff, but I still think there’s a lot of people riding high on these types of investments. And at some point, there’ll there’ll be a bit of a reckoning.

Colin White: Call an end to something like that? But, yeah, I I I do think that we’re gonna continue to see it unravel and and reverse a little bit. I just think it’s also important to to understand or explore a little bit that there’s actual there’s a cause causal relationship here. It’s just not a correlative thing. Like, you know, markets up there before they go down.

When you enter the time in the market where people are behaving by putting weight on different things and they’re allocating money to certain things, when investor behavior changes, that can influence stock prices. And that behavior, the reversal of that behavior will cause reversal in trading strategies, which will gradually bring things back to normalcy at some point. Now what what’s the catalyst for that? Is it just time, or do you think it’s just gonna be everybody realizes that they’re over their skis?

Josh Sheluk: I don’t think people realize that unless there is a catalyst. Now again, I could probably argue against myself in saying that some of these meme coins and altcoins over the last few months have totally turned the other way, and it doesn’t really seem like there was a clear catalyst for that. But I think usually there’s some events and that drives prices down for some reason. I don’t know what the event’s gonna be. I don’t know when it’s to happen.

And then people realize, oh, man, maybe this is not as as surefire bad as I thought it was. I should sell. And that cascading effects sort of collapses the whole the whole shell. So I don’t know what that event’s gonna be. It’s probably It might be something totally unrelated to the market whatsoever.

Could be something totally unrelated to any of these investments, but some type of event that, I guess, in a way adjust people think people’s thinking on on risk tolerance and and how much risk they’re willing to take.

Colin White: I guess something else is gonna attract attention. Whether somebody wakes up one day and all of sudden, Suncor is paying an 8% dividend and they they get an 85% payout ratio. Holy That’s that’s a great investment. And I made all those numbers up, pulled them right out of my ass. But, you know, something like that, somebody’s gonna notice something that’s out of favor that has been allowed to drift to a point where it’s gotten really attractive, and all of a sudden, the little start to trickle like well, there I I think it’s gonna be an attention thing that the attention’s gonna shift.

I think that either it’s gonna be a problem in the space that blows up or something else is gonna be shiny enough, get devalued to a to a point where it begins to get all the attention and dividend investing comes back.

Josh Sheluk: Right.

Colin White: As the next thing everybody has to do.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. So this is a prediction that I think you’ll like. I think that a new record will be set for ETFs launched in 2026.

Colin White: Oh my goodness. I do not want to accept this as possible much less stand behind it as the prediction.

Josh Sheluk: I can’t remember who I was talking to. This was like seven or eight years ago. I was talking to somebody that works in the ETF industry, probably on the sales side. And I said at that time, I said, I think we’re kind of saturated on the ETF market, don’t you think? And he kind of in a very polite way said, No, I don’t think so.

I think there’s a lot of different things that can be launched here. And sure enough, we’ve probably tripled the number of ETFs since I made that comment just in Canada alone. And the reason I came up with this one is because it was recently reported that over 300 new ETFs were launched in Canada in 2025, just in Canada and just in 2025. So it’s like more than one new ETF every trading day and it’s just getting out of hand. Fortunate thing is I think we also set a new record for the number of garbage ETFs that were launched this year, like absolute garbage that nobody should ever invest in.

And that’s the sad part.

Colin White: Well, if you if you buy it, they’ll build it. You know, it’s it’s kind of a watchword. You know, I had a conversation with somebody earlier talking about because we had on the conversation. The fee compression was was a big thing in the investment industry for a little bit, man. You know, this this coming fee compression and stuff, and that seems to have stalled out.

It doesn’t seem to be as topical as it maybe should be or could have been. But part of the reason behind it is all of the mutual fund and seg fund providers are now also offering ETFs. So if they’re not competing with each other, like, it’s just all in the market now. Right? So what could have been something that reduced mutual fund fees has turned into, oh, we’re gonna leave those at a higher fee because it’s good margin, and we’ll launch an ETF and capture that market too because there’s still good margins to be made in the ETF side of it.

So I think that you’re gonna, you know, see a complete duplication for sure, plus then all of the more interesting things you can do in ETFs. So, no, I don’t want you to be right. I I I I would do anything I could to make you from not being right, but you’re probably right.

Josh Sheluk: The the thing that I think would lead us to being incorrect is some type of significant market correction because new products are not gonna be as readily launched in a market correction.

Colin White: Yes. They will. Double bear ETFs will get launched. Profit profit from our market decline. Josh, come on, dude.

You’re loving them over the plate now.

Josh Sheluk: I know. Although the number of single stock leveraged ETFs that were launched in the last year is unbelievable. So you’re right. They’ll just launched single stock bear ETFs or single stock inverse ETFs or whatever they’re gonna do.

Colin White: Yeah. No. They actually have those all in a vault ready to go based on market conditions.

Josh Sheluk: Well, some of them are out there already actually. Some of them are out there already. So yeah, different products will sell. Okay. This one, I’m gonna cheat a little bit.

I’m not gonna make a prediction for 2026. I’m gonna make a prediction for the next ten years.

Colin White: Holy crap. I can’t wait for that wrap up podcast. Exactly.

Josh Sheluk: Again, this is something that we’re probably gonna forget about. So we’re not gonna come back ten years from now and actually audit whether this was correct or not. But I was trying to come up with a sector idea for 2026. And I just thought, you know what, this is gonna be too hard. I don’t really have any good ideas.

But one thing that I do think that will be true, again, I’m reasonably confident of this. Infotech information technology will not be the best performing sector over the next ten years. And I was specifically looking at the S and P 500 and I’ll give you a bonus prediction here. I don’t think the S and P 500 will be the best performing developed market over the next ten years. And I’ll give you a bit of context.

So Infotech has outperformed all other sectors on the S and P 500 in the last ten years, which is not really that surprising when you think of what have been the best performing companies there. But the second best performing sector in the S and P 500 has underperformed Infotech by about a factor of two. So a different way, Infotech has doubled their annualized return of the second best sector in the S and P 500 over the last ten years, which is really quite remarkable in my view. And on The US side, The US has beat all other global developed markets over the last ten years, depending on which market you look at, it’s somewhere between 26% per year, which is also a pretty significant difference. So I feel pretty confident in this one.

What do you think?

Colin White: I think, you know, you you could draw parallels to other movements in in history going all the way back to industrial revolution where 80% of the workforce was working on firms and then industrial revolution came along and there was this huge spike and then a kind of a plateau. And then the next huge spike comes info. You know, the worldwide webmails, there’s there’s just these huge events that one sector really dominates the growth and everything else kind of in a relative base that kinda withers away. But then there is a plateau. Like, at some point back in it, gets more difficult when you get into the info space because how do you define that.

Right? Because, you know, you the the devil’s in the details here as to what all you’re including with that. Is AI really info space, or is that is that its own category, a subcategory, and that kind of thing? But know for sure, I I think that we’re going through one of those periods in human history where, you know, we’re we’re spending heavily on something that’s dramatically improving, you know, the potential for quality of life and, you know, from an intellectual perspective driving things forward. It will run its course.

Now what the next thing is, whether it’s, you know, the the margins on rare earth realm has become a thing, or who knows what the next thing will be. That’s a beautiful thing. You never know what the next thing is gonna be until you live it. But, yeah, I I think it’s gonna run its hard, but we are going through one of those seminal shifts. And, you know, it’ll be interesting to see what that plateauing looks like.

Because, like, as we said earlier, I think it’s a lot of the infrastructure, it seems to have been put in place on the AI side, but the use cases and people’s adoption of the use cases is still, like, the complete wild west.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. And one of the reasons I’m fairly confident in this one, The U. S. Market makes up about two thirds of the global market cap at the moment.

Colin White: Two thirds now?

Josh Sheluk: It’s around there. Again, depending on how you define the global market cap. Infotech, information technology is about 35% of the S and P 500, that one sector. So there’s like a lot of big numbers here where you can only grow so much. Like if you continue to double every year, you’re basically, or double the performance of all other sectors or regions every year, you’re eventually getting to a point where you’re like 100% of the market.

So it just is not really feasible at some point as well. But you mentioned rare earths. Interesting thing, I didn’t really realize this until recently I was reading a book. Rare earths are really not rare. They’re abundant.

Did you know this?

Colin White: I can’t say I’m explicitly aware of what you’re about to tell me, but, I I I would be surprised if they truly were rare in this sense of rare. I mean, we don’t know where they are, I think rare.

Josh Sheluk: Well, yeah, I think the the the rareness comes from the fact that they’re very expensive and difficult to extract and refine, but they’re actually abundant in the actual, you know, the physical sense of it all. They’re actually quite abundant. Anyway, that’s not a prediction or related to predictions at all, but this next one is commodity related. I don’t think I’ll be any better able to predict gold prices in 2026 than I have at any time in the past. And I came up with this one because I was looking at a gold prediction.

I’m trying to make a gold prediction. Gold’s so top core right now, it’s up, I don’t know, whatever, 65 or 80% this year or whatever it is. And I was thinking, okay, how do I make a prediction off of this? And I was looking through some historical numbers and all that, and I was just like, I can’t, I can’t come up with anything. There’s nothing that I can make that I’d feel good about in terms of prediction.

There’s nothing that I can say that doesn’t allow some people to draw like an investment conclusion from it or something, and I don’t wanna be that person. So I’ve just said, I can’t predict it. There’s no way to value gold. There’s never been proper way to value gold. And if you can derive some cash flows from it or project where the profitability of the business is gonna be or project what interest you’re gonna get from owning something, just there’s no way to value it.

So if you can’t really value it, you don’t know where the price is going, I don’t know what the price should be, it’s all based on psychology and I will have no better idea how to do any of that twelve months from now.

Colin White: Okay. Step aside big shoes because I’m gonna make a gold prediction. This is one of my predictions for next year. And this is how one can make a gold prediction. Because number one, do no harm.

Right? We don’t wanna cause any harm. Now the people who believe in gold are not gonna change their mind. Like, there’s nothing I’m gonna say to them right now that is going to cause them to invest or not invest. So I’m not worried about that half of the crowd, and I don’t think I’ll ever talk anybody into investing in it because I am gonna go on the record right here, now at this place and at this time before these people that gold will not have as good a year this year, 2026, as it did in 2025.

I am willing to say that.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. Okay.

Colin White: Think that and I think that rises to the level of the of what we would call a prediction. Now our our version of what is a prediction and not is a bit nebulous and maybe a bit generous, but I think it rises to that.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could still have a 50% return on gold and that would your prediction would still come true. So that’s maybe not so much from a prediction, but I mean, lot of these aren’t anyway.

Colin White: Yeah. I use the big shoe. Let’s go back over yours again.

Josh Sheluk: Mine are ridiculous. I can’t make fun of your ridiculous prediction. But I was actually looking at historical gold prices because I trying to derive some type of prediction like that, like directionally where’s the gold price gonna go. And I was just like, you know what? There have been a lot of clusters of really good returns on gold prices.

There have also been some good years followed by really bad years. And there have been good years that do nothing. And there have been decades that do really well and decades that do really poorly. That’s why I came up with, I just don’t know. There’s just nothing here that I could predict.

Colin White: The only thing that I kinda hang my hat on is that it does have an outsized impact on the things around it. Right? So if gold was to have another year like it had in 2025 and 2026, that would cause a ripple effect that I feel would disrupt the ability of gold to keep moving. Yep. I don’t think that the global currencies would tolerate gold having another year like this without a lot of strife.

So there would be measures taken globally to cap it. I don’t think the world could deal with cold having another year like it’s just had, and that’s complete supposition.

Josh Sheluk: Interestingly, this last one will be, again, focused on the analysts that are out there.

Colin White: And

Josh Sheluk: I added this one today because I was reading an article from Bloomberg and Bloomberg’s like, We surveyed 21 analysts, sell side analysts, and every one of them was predicting an increase in the S and P 500 with an average gain of 9% next year. So my prediction is that the sell side strategists will be wrong. And it’s a pretty simple prediction to make. They’re always wrong about this stuff. They always kind of cluster to the long term average when in reality, the market never hits the long term average.

And so I think they’re gonna be wrong again this year. So here’s a question for you, Paul. So analysts, again, they always kind of cluster to the long term average. Like whenever you look at what’s the average analyst prediction for growth in the S and P 500, it’s always like eight to 10%. So somewhere in there, everyone clusters to that average.

But in the last ninety seven years, since we have decent data on the S and P 500. I’ll give you a big range around these analyst predictions. How many of those ninety seven years has the S and P 500 delivered a return between 515%? Positive five and positive 15% in the last ninety seven years. How many years has it done that?

Colin White: Oh, real reason, thirty eight percent.

Josh Sheluk: It’s done at seventeen years, which is less than 20% of the time. Oh. We have some obsession collectively as analysts, as strategists, as researchers to group all of our projections on a year by year basis around this, call it 10% number. It happens without fail. And less than 20% of the time, we actually come in with a pretty broad range of that number.

Like, 80% of the time, it’s way off from that number. So what are we doing with our projection? And better question, what are we doing listening to these projections? It’s useless.

Colin White: Josh, this was a this was a lesson that was learned by our ancestors on the Serengeti. When a herd of animals is running together, they are safer. If somebody drifts away, they’re likely to get picked off. So wherever one analyst goes, they will all go because it’s difficult to get fired if you’re the same with all the others. Trying to stand out is going to get you killed.

So I think there’s an actual business case as to why we will never see an analyst take any of these chances because that’s how you lose your job. Unless you get it right the first time and then you can make a career off that one time being right like doctor Michael Burry. You know, you can live the rest of your life based on the one time you get it right when everybody else is getting it wrong, but that’s a really low probability way of making a living that I wouldn’t suggest.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. Fair point. The analysts can keep doing their thing and herding together, but maybe as an investor, you shouldn’t rely on that to make a decision. How about that?

Colin White: Absolutely. You didn’t you didn’t steal my thunder. Is that the end of your list?

Josh Sheluk: That’s it.

Colin White: I have one that I was noodling on this, and I want your your take on this because I wanna make a an assertion that I I want you to to chime in on. Would you characterize this as a uncharacteristically weak year for the US dollar?

Josh Sheluk: Okay. So what are you comparing the US dollar against? The Canadian dollar or basket of global currencies?

Colin White: The Euro, the Yen, the Pound, Canadian dollar.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. So I think, I would consider it Now uncharacteristically I’d probably add an asterisk to that with, that’s probably my perception over the last twenty some odd years.

Colin White: That it has weakened?

Josh Sheluk: That this is a weak year relative to the last twenty years, but may maybe not through all of history.

Colin White: Yeah. No. No. No. More than fair.

So we are on some level accepting the assertion with a degree of certainty of excessive 67%.

Josh Sheluk: Sure.

Colin White: I’m willing to walk way out there by myself and risk my job security by saying that I think we’re gonna see another weak year relative basis for the USD versus a basket of global because I think the uncertainty being generated is going to continue to work against The US, reclaiming its rightful sorry, its former role as the economic leader of the world. I think that will continue to diminish over 2026. How bold is that?

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. Think there’s a decent amount of commentary at the moment on the US dollar may continue to weaken from here. I think part of the angle is what you said. There’s a lot of uncertainty around The US, let’s call it economic and political situation at the moment that could lead to weakness in the currency. I think the other part of that is the US dollar has actually been very strong, I think.

And I haven’t fact checked this, but I think over the last twenty or some odd years, the US dollar has been very strong. So currencies tend to be a little bit mean reverting. So maybe we’re just gonna you know, absent any unusualness around it, maybe we’re just gonna mean revert and and come back to a little bit more of an average if we wanna call it.

Colin White: No. No. That that that’s perfectly fair. But I think one one of the things that’s gonna play out and I I am not gonna make a prediction on this, but I think one of the conversations we’re gonna in 2026 is about the independence of the US Federal Reserve. I think that that’s that conversation is gonna play out in 2026.

I’m not picking aside or saying that it’s gonna go one way or the other. But I think the fact that that conversation is gonna happen to 2026 is gonna contribute to that continuing weakness. Even if it is a reversion to the mean, this could be the catalyst that takes it back to the mean.

Josh Sheluk: Yep. Yeah. And there’s some real indications that that that concern around the independence has already led to higher longer term interest rates in The U. S. So we’re seeing that play out, I think somewhat in real time.

And it is, I think very likely to accelerate that conversation into 2026 because of all the turnover that needs to happen on the Federal Reserve Board next year.

Colin White: Let and let and let’s just jump in for a second and and explain why this is not an investable thought. Because the market is gonna move based on the expectations of what they think is gonna happen. It’s not gonna move based on the news. So, again, this is another one of the ones. Even if you got what’s about to happen right, that’s irrelevant because the market’s already priced to now come in that is unknowable.

And the news is going to either confirm or refute that and the move is gonna happen thusly. So it’s still not investable.

Josh Sheluk: Let me ask you for a bonus prediction. There will be a new chair of the Federal Reserve in 2026. We know that for a fact. There’s currently a few candidates that are out there as likely new chairs. And to some extent, I guess Trump has some authority over who this will be.

But it’s not really predicting who the chair is. Do you think there’s the potential for the market to react in a positive way no matter who is selected for chair? And the reason I asked that is this could be one of those situations where right now uncertainty is here. Once the selection is made, uncertainty drops. No matter who it is, uncertainty drops and market kinda resets itself in a positive way.

Do you think that’s a possibility?

Colin White: It’s gonna be Jim Kramer. Right? Because he’s gonna pick them

Josh Sheluk: I didn’t ask you to predict who it’s

Colin White: gonna be. Oh. Oh. Well, yeah, this I I think that’s possible for sure. I don’t I don’t I think the market is more prone to worry about something than to be optimistic about something.

We’re in the entire history of the world worrying about something has never helped. So I think just taking away the worry, yes, I I I would suspect to see some form of sympathy rally or positive rally on the conclusion of of of the exercise, whatever the outcome is. Because I think the the worst case scenarios that people are gonna start pricing in are gonna be dispelled. Is that we’re still gonna find a way forward going back to the self leveling nature of the global economy. I think we’re we’ll still find a way for it.

It will be organized differently. There’ll be different winners and losers. You know, the the which is where diversification is just gonna be absolutely key.

Josh Sheluk: Any final predictions? That’s, like,

Colin White: Yeah. I don’t I don’t think we need to add to the predictions, but I I guess this is I hope this is the year that we lose some of the confidence that we gained in 2025 because I think that that’s the longer that the confidence persists, the more damage it’s gonna do when it eventually unwinds. So I’m hoping we have a return to a bit more normalcy this year where companies that make money are the ones that are you know, have the good spot prices and the good performance in the stock market, and, you know, more sustainable behavior gets rewarded. Because right now, my fear is that unsustainable behavior is being rewarded, and that’s a very dangerous thing longer because that that’s my hope. That’s not a prediction.

It’s a hope for 2026.

Josh Sheluk: And did I hear of semblance of a prediction that diversification will be beneficial this year? I think I heard that in there somewhere.

Colin White: Diversification is beneficial every year regardless of outcome. See, that’s one of those ones that’s right or wrong based on the time you made the decision, not based on the outcome. Because oil goes to $120 a barrel, Josh, we’re gonna look stupid.

Josh Sheluk: Well, that’s a great way to end it off. And again, don’t invest off of any of these suggestions or

Colin White: these Let’s do something different here, Josh. Let’s say to whatever platform you’re watching on, let’s let’s let’s begin let the comments begin. I think this is a great opportunity for people to comment on their predictions for 2026. I’d love to read that. I think that would be just fascinating.

For your comments on on our predictions, I think that I would like to engage in real time with the audience to see what we’ve missed. I mean, there’s just so many obvious things that we’ve missed. Please enlighten us.

Josh Sheluk: Yeah. Looking forward to that.

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