136 - 2026 Market Predictions (Part 1): Macro Trends & Positioning For Volatility

2026 Market Predictions (Part 1) | Macro Trends + Top Ticker Picks

This is Part 1 of our 2026 market outlook. We didn’t split this because the strategy changes — we split it because the episode got long.

In this series we’re doing what most “predictions” don’t: showing our work. We walk through the major themes we expect to drive 2026 and we layer in how we’re thinking about positioning as we go — income vs growth, risk mitigation, and valuation discipline.

Part 1 covers themes like:

• AI continuing to dominate (and the next wave: agentic + physical + sovereign AI)
• Data center exposure (including “outside-the-box” income angles)
• Robotics + automation
• Quantum computing
• Interest rate cuts + a softer labor market (and what that means for income sectors)
• Defensive positioning for volatility / “cra-cra” market days
• Stagflation risk and inflation hedges
• Dividend-first strategy when price appreciation may be limited

📌 We also included a spreadsheet with ~80 tickers, plus entry ranges and target prices to help you avoid the “good pick, bad entry” problem.

Click HERE

Part 2 picks up later in the list (crypto onward), plus the valuation/chart discussion.

Questions? Email Tim at debrine9@gmail.com

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**DISCLAIMER**
Ticker metrics change as markets and companies change, so always do your own research. The content in this podcast is based on personal experience and is for educational purposes, not financial advice. See full disclaimer here.

Episode music was created using Loudly.

Transcript

Welcome to roaming returns a podcast about generating a passive income with dividend stocks so you can secure your finances and liberate your life. 

Welcome to our 2026 market predictions breakdown. 
The goal here is simple: we’re walking through the macro and economic themes we think matter in 2026 and how we can strategically position our investments while still focusing on income. 
Buckle up because we’ve got tons of tickers, and as always, our top picks in each category. You’re not going to want to miss why we have a drastically different outlook than the majority of experts.  
P.s. We had to split this into two parts because it got long, so make sure you don't miss the other half.

We're back for the 2026 predictions. Was there any questions in the live streams? No questions. I didn't see any.
We got one comment that got answered in the second one. The comments about like the... Yield max, always yield max. Yeah, the income generators, but not very many questions.
You guys are not very chatty, lurking in the shadows. If you guys have questions, just ask. I shouldn't be knocking people for doing that, because it's totally like our MO.
It's just like lurking in shadows. And we will answer them whenever you guys ask them. Yep, whenever you guys ask them.
If not, continue to be entertained by them. Crazy. So if you guys liked those two live streams where we did the thing investment, we just did another one for our weekly top 10.
I'm going to do that every week, so you guys can see if you have questions or whatever. So we'll have every week. I just think that's easier than trying to explain them.
I'll just do it live. I think those would be good too, because people can pop in and we'll do it like after work when people aren't in the middle of day, like their work week type deal. So you'll have more chances to get in if you wanted to actually get in and didn't have the opportunity.
So that'll be fun going forward. So check those out. This probably will be a two-parter.
Oh, that's right. Did you find a good breaking point? No, but we'll just break it. All right.
This week's is what 2026 could look like. What I think it'll look like, but what it could look like. Yeah, Oracle, let's get your freaking predictions, because you've been pretty dead on balls for the last two years.
So basically, the first area that we're going to discuss is artificial intelligence, obviously, because that's going to be around for years and years. And despite the people who think it's not. There's a huge confliction right now.
There's people who think we're in an AI bubble, much like the internet bubble, and that can be accurate. Depending on the company you're talking about. There's some accuracy in that, because the companies, all they really do is just slap money, or they slap AI onto their research money and say, we're actually researching AIs, and that could drive up the valuation.
But if they don't have a game plan, if they don't have implementation, if they don't actually, they're not innovating it, which a lot of these other companies are innovating. So it could be a lot like the internet bubble, where companies were just slapping dot com on stuff, and that had no reason to be slapped on. Right, right.
They were just driving up, but. Prices for no reason. I can see why people are hesitant about AI, but at the same time, you have to take a step out of your comfort zone and what you're worried about.
And acknowledge that artificial intelligence is going to be like a breakthrough. It's going to be like, it's going to be, for like the next 20 years, it's at least 20 years, it's going to be so prevalent in all sectors. And it's just going to keep iterating just like the internet did.
So it will, there'll be things, you know, garbage that falls away, but the stuff who really, really run with it, it like spurs the next iteration. And if you look back at technology, technology is moving at an exponential, exponential rate. So like, just because the tech AI, or not the internet bubble did what it did, like this, I think the AI is going to progress ridiculously faster.
And I could just, before I talk any further, there's going to be like 80 some tickers in this. So we are going to have like a. Spreadsheet that gets attached. Spreadsheet that's attached to the.
No, no worries about trying to jot these all down. So you guys can go through at your leisure. There's a lot of tickers in this.
I will highlight the ones that I like in each area that I'm going to discuss. So right now, what I see coming down the road with AI, I see there's going to be a breakthrough in three main areas of AI. Agentic AI, physical AI, and sovereign AI will be the three areas that I'm looking at this year.
Okay, you need to explain this because like I don't even want to. Agentic AI is the ability to operate autonomously to achieve goals. So like basically you input something into the AI.
AI can, without human interaction, other than that the prompts can actually pull, scour the web or whatever it does to come up with its own way to achieve goals. Like chat GPT. Okay.
Basically. Where you just input a question to chat GPT, it scours the interweb and it comes up with a solution to your problem or how to achieve your goals. Physical AI involves AI systems that interact with the physical world through robotics.
We have a whole area about robotics. I think robotics are just, we have scratched the surface of that. And it's going to be so huge.
And sovereign AI is a strategic approach to ensure an organization or government or whatever retains control over its data model and computer infrastructure. So we'll go into each of those now. Agentic AI will be the first one we'll discuss.
Basically its focus is to have independent operation to achieve goals. Like you want your AI to operate independently of the humans to achieve whatever goals that you want to achieve with your inputs. So how does that work? It devises multi-step processes and adjust methods based on real-time feedback.
Moving beyond being a passive tool to a collaborative partner. That's like a lot of the smaller businesses are starting to do that where they'll use it with like deliveries and fees and product, actually product implement, not implementation, but like introduction. So it's taking like initiative? Into the ecosystem.
So it is. It's actually becoming like a collaborative partner, but it's literally just a computer that you input. So you have like your dad's business would be a prime example.
He does landscaping. He would have an AI where he would basically have the AI. He'd say, I need this tool.
And the AI would scour the web and be like, well, here's the tool for sale. And here's how much it would cost to produce this tool. So the AI actually does all the tedious stuff.
And that's what Chat GPT does now. Example would be an AI assistant that can book appointments, manage calendars and perform other tasks without constant human intervention. Oh, no.
So your example needed to go one step further where it would be like sourcing the tool out for you, getting it set up for you. Whatever, but that's like, that's what agentic is. And that's what everything up to now has been for the most part.
Well, moving more towards. Whereas physical AI, the focus of physical AI is to interact with the physical world and how it works. AI that enables robots to perform tasks in environments like manufacturing, logistics and agriculture.
Prime example would be the warehouses where there's autonomous robots in a warehouse that can move and organize inventory or drone that's used in agriculture to monitor crops or to deliver the inventory from the warehouse. So that is the robotic component of it where it's going to be drones and like actual robots in different locations that do the tedious work. So it's kind of like taking a CNC machine, but allowing it to have like exposure to an open world, kind of like in video games, as opposed to a self-contained because like you pre-programmed the stuff into it and it like just goes through the process.
Just now starting, like I said, they've just scratched the surface of the robotics and it's... Eyeballs. It's just now starting and it's very exciting. For me, it's very exciting because it's cool.
Because seriously, if I could hire a maid, I would not have a dirty house. So what they're going to do is basically going to... Can you imagine loading up a freaking robot in the van? Replace humans like that. That's where like this right here is where the whole argument like they're going to replace human jobs is coming from because they're actually going to basically put robots in locations where the humans are unreliable.
They cost too much. They have vacations or whatever. Whatever, it's ridiculous.
Basically just going to put a machine in there that you just put $10,000 into a robot and that's all you ever have to do every now and then you'll have someone come in and update the software or fix like general maintenance. But like that's how companies are going to... And we've already started to see it in the tech world because like Google and Apple and Amazon have all like... They've had job people leave whether it's voluntarily or they laid them off and they're not replacing the job because they have a robot in the background that can do the job of the people they just laid off. And I personally think it's a good thing that this is happening because one, it's going to free people up.
Now people are looking at it through the perspective of people are going to lose jobs but at the same time there's a lot of very dissatisfied people in jobs who are kind of like lowering the bar, lowering the bar, lowering the bar which means the customers are not getting what they want. So it's creating this like very displeasure of like quality and like all this other stuff that's happening. And honestly, this is the natural answer for the next progressionary.
So consequences like from things, it's just literally how stuff works. People need to get over the whole fear of that AI is going to take my job. But if it does, that sucks.
But so the thing is if you're afraid that's going to happen, how can you make yourself irreplaceable or how can you move into a position that makes you irreplaceable? That's all you have to think. Because they said the same thing about the internet. Like the internet is going to replace jobs.
But then they basically created new jobs that the internet didn't take. Right. And that fear is actually justified.
It's like that's your body telling you like you need to take action because it's probably going to happen to you. So just listen to it, heed it and roll with the punches. Like that's life.
And the third area is sovereign AI. And this is where the focus is to control and security of AI systems and their data. How it works, it involves building vendor independent AI and keeping data models and computers within specific borders to safeguard against control by third parties.
A prime example of this would be like Palantir has done some of this. A government that develops its own AI models using domestic data and computers to maintain national security and data integrity. So this is more of the cyber security type stuff, but it's controlled by AI.
I feel like that's the scary part right there. That's the part. I feel like that's the scary part right there.
It's like if you remember watching... iRobot? Or do I have that name wrong again? Terminator or like Terminator whenever Skynet took over the world, it was basically from a security component. And then basically the AI said, well, we're securing the data and the humans are compromising the data. So that's where the AI starts to question, are humans necessary? And then that's when it gets bad.
It gets bad. If you watch movies. Genocide.
For me, here's the first of some tickers. For me, in this area of AI, I like AIPA a lot. I love it.
It's the rec shares where they basically just invest in the top 20 AI companies and they hold their stock and then they just write options on it. AIPI, I like a lot from the payout perspective because it's 20-some to 30-some percent. Right.
Really good payout and they do the dirty work. Nvidia or Palantir themselves, you're not good. But Nvidia's stock is like 0.1% and Palantir doesn't even pay one.
Right. And we're dividends. As income investors, we want to generate income from the macro trends.
So that's why AIPI is my pick of these four. Absolutely. And again, the basket of funds, you don't have to do that research to even find the ones.
Yeah, they do it for you. They do it for you. They're like top-notch.
It's actively managed. So they'll be like, oh, well, this one, we're getting out of that. I want to get in this one.
So that's cool. So if you're worried about the net cost falling away. I don't mind paying the fees because the fees are paid out before the dividend comes out.
And the dividend's high. You don't have to worry about it. That's one of the biggest people's biggest bitch about a lot of these- High fees are a problem if you're not making dividends or if you're only getting like one to two percent.
A lot of closing the funds or the ETFs that are higher yield, they're like, oh, what about the fees? Well, the fees don't really matter because it comes out before the dividend. When you have 30% yields, the fees don't matter. Your dividend, I guess, could be a little bit higher, but I would rather have a higher fee that they do all the work for me.
Right, especially when it comes to the AI sector right now with this trend booming because new companies, again, we want them to scour so that those dot-com bubble bursters aren't in the AI bubble burst list. And obviously, NVIDIA and Palantir are both big companies in the AI sector, but I go, I want income, so I'm going to do the round tail NVDW or PLTW. I don't like those as much as AIPI because I just think AIPI is better ran, whereas NVDW and PLTW is the round tails.
They only have like 20% of their holdings in the stock. But they're high income generators. But they generate a shit ton of income.
And then an ETF, we're in this QQQI. I know there's like 40 different variations of the QQQ. There's QQY, QYLD, QQQI, QQX.
I like QQQI. It yields like 13% and it's a good income idea. An area we touched on last year, and I think will be strong again through probably 2030 at least because of AI is data centers, but I don't think it's going to be as lucrative as the AI itself because of the cray-cray that may or may not happen.
When I say cray-cray, I fully expect there to be ridiculous amounts of volatility in 2026 because of it's an election year, because of rate cuts. You saw the last few months where like, oh, they're going to cut rates. The stock market's up.
Oh, this information may make them not want to cut rates. The stock market's down. That type of volatility is going to carry over.
And because of that, I think I like actually like thinking outside the box here when it comes to data centers and AI. We just picked up DLR, which is probably, if not the biggest, one of the biggest data center stocks out there. We picked up DLR, their preferred share L, PRL, whereas DLR only yields about 3%.
DLR, PRL yields 6% and it's- Way, way, way difference in price. It's probably 18% undervalued, whereas DLR is like the potential for DLR is like 40. I think you can go up 40%, but I'd rather just have a preferred where I'm just getting paid before anything else.
But the share cost is so much lower than if you had a regular- Yeah, DLR is like $160 a share, whereas DLR, PRL is like $20 a share. So you can get a lot of shares. A lot more shares, aka a lot more dividends.
Another one that's thinking outside the box when it comes to data centers is Verizon because they're going to need the cables to run the data centers. TBB, STWD, which is- Steward. That has some- That's not Steward, is it? It's Starwood.
It has some exposure to data centers. BTX is... What the hell is BTX? I forget what it is, but we'll- Relating to data centers, I assume. And ARCC, which basically is a BDC that makes loans out to people looking to build data centers.
Interesting. In that list there, I like DLR, PRL and ARCC. I like ARCC for a multitude of reasons because they are the biggest BDC when it comes to assets.
I was going to ask- $20 billion or some shit like that. If ARCC is into that kind of stuff, I think we talked before or somewhere about how they're going to actually, to solve the electricity problem, they're going to start shooting data centers into orbit for unlimited solar. Well, we're getting to that.
You're getting ahead of yourself. That's literally the next point. Sorry, I didn't read.
I will cut that out. So all those ones I just mentioned are examples of data center exposure that basically a lot of people don't think of when they think of data centers. DLR, the other ones are like, why would you think Verizon or a real estate trust or BDC when it comes to data centers? And they need the buildings and they need the money and they need the energy.
And we'll get the utility component. Well, and that's what we were talking about too when we were talking about investing in the utilities. The lines that provide the service are always going to be more stable then.
So with this AI boom, even if you're not getting in the right AI stocks, you can go upstream a little bit. No, obviously there's chip components. There's going to be chips in the AI.
But basically, if you remember the California Gold Rush, and this is one of the things most experts will pull up, the people that made money when there was gold found in California weren't so much the prospective gold diggers, it was the people that sold them the ponies and the shovels and the picks. That's why they have the pick and shovel. When they mentioned investing, you want AI is a transformation thing that's going to be around for years, but you want the people to give them the buildings or give them the energy or give them the money or how's the data that can... So that's what you're looking for.
Carm just brought up StarCloud. If you're not familiar with StarCloud and if it ever IPOs, buy it right away. Don't even think about it.
Basically, they're starting to think about building data centers in space. StarCloud is the company that would be building data centers in space. They'll use 10 times less energy than the on the ground because of limitless solar power.
Which I'm actually really glad they're starting to think further ahead than they usually do because they'll usually build for something and then realize it's already outdated. And then it's like highway construction where they build for like right now, but they're not building for like 10 years from now. And then they have to restart construction pretty much as soon as they finish.
So I like the fact that they're already thinking about... Is the amount of energy they use. So if you can find a way to actually not use any energy from humans and you just blast something into space, they're dealing with satellites all the time. So why wouldn't they just start building data centers up there? Right.
And it might be something as simple as that where they just put a satellite, a big satellite into space and they just house the data in that satellite. I don't know how... Yeah, I don't know how that works either. But I like that concept better than taking up ground space for like water and all that other stuff.
And then there's like... So we have all that positivity about the AI stuff. Now we're going to get to like the downer part. Additionally, because of AI, there's adoption in pretty much every sector of the economy with AI.
The labor market will weaken. We've already started to see the labor market weaken. Unemployment just came in at, I think... What are these numbers? 4.6. These numbers.
I expect unemployment to actually... No, 4.3. I expect unemployment to actually increase from 4.3 to at least 4.7 at some point in 2026. I think it'll actually be above 5. But I went conservative with the 4.7. Why? Because AI will replace a lot of different jobs from skilled to unskilled. If you're a skilled worker, you most likely will be able to find a replacement job.
If you're unskilled though, the opportunities might not be so prevalent. What I mean by unskilled, like whenever you have people pulling packages in a warehouse or you have someone flipping a burger or taking orders. That's what I mean by unskilled.
I'm not saying it doesn't take skill to do it, that's what I mean. Skilled labor is more the people who can actually troubleshoot in real time. And they have a lot more than just a singular thing that they're doing.
So the economy, the part that people really worry about is the economy if you're an investor. The economy necessarily won't take a hit if we have unemployment at 5% because if the job shifts from a person to AI, most likely the company is going to have really strong profit margins and revenue and growth. And we're already starting to see that happen at Google.
Microsoft and Apple to name a few. People are being laid off. Shocker.
AI is learning their job and then the job is not being filled. Which leads us to my second, I mean there's like a bunch of stuff in that AI sector, but my second big area or sector is robotics. This is going to be huge.
Robotics is expected to see significant growth in the physical AI integration with robots becoming more visible in everyday life. And specific sectors like construction. Construction.
Manufacturing and service industries. I never thought of construction. Construction.
They're really going to have robots out there like building houses and shit. That's going to be sick. Again, if they're not getting hurt as frequently, I could even see the mechanic process being a lot easier than the freaking, yeah.
So key trends will include more advanced humanoid robots for versatile tasks, increased use of robotics in disaster response and space exploration. Instead of sending monkeys into space, we're going to send robots. And continued integration of robots into smart cities and homes.
New technologies like advanced actuators, multi-modal sensor fusion and AI-driven stimulation will also- Do I need to read this for you? Yes. So new technologies like advanced actuators, multi-modal sensor fusion and AI-driven simulation will be also drive process. Will also drive progress.
So like what is an actuator? An actuator is like a switch that flips. So like an advanced one would be one that probably has multiple different dynamic things where if five of these things are yeses, then it will flip over. It's kind of like the thing on a train track, but like more complex versions.
Like either it's on or it's off to engage a different downstream role process. Okay. I'm pretty sure that's what it is.
Through my research, they never really actually defined- You just didn't look up what an actuator was? I don't care. Like think about it, an actuator. I don't care.
It's like a button. How can I make money? That's all I'm concerned with. NVIDIA, NBDA, Tesla, TSLA, Robo.
Robo. R-O-B-O, bots, B-O-T-Z and O-R-B-T. Ribbit.
Ribbit are great initial investing ideas. For robotics, I like Tesla the most out of that. If you're not familiar, Tesla is doing basically AI-driven taxis and they're building like robots.
They're actually like- They have a large component of their revenue and their research and development set up to robotics. Because I want income, we're going to do TSLW instead of TSLA. That's the Roundhill Tesla single-payer one. Yeah. I fully expect they're like, I think this is just my gut feeling in the TSLW that if you invest in it prior to 2026, your initial investment will be paid back in 2026.
I expect more than 100% return in dividends. And that's a lot for a round hill, like for them to be those freaking synthetic or not. Well, options trade ETFs.
That's big because normally everybody's working. I can't stress enough how much I think Tesla's going to go up. I think Tesla's going to explode once they start introducing the robots.
Oh, I do too. Cause one of the things I've heard, I don't remember where it was and it's been years, but like the AI driven vehicles, there's going to be a wave in cities more than likely where people don't own cars. They like subscribe to some kind of service where they actually have cars show up and drop off that they just take and get in them and they take them wherever.
And then they like, so they won't need insurance. They'll just need like the actual subscription or whatever, like communal car sharing thing without people driving that. So I would even think Ubers are going to be like in jeopardy here.
Possibly. And that's why one of the ones that we picked up for growth stocks a few months ago, CGNX is still in the portfolio that, and remember that's the eyes for robots where they use sensors to like, so robots can see. So CGNX is going to pop off.
Next area where I think that we're going to see a lot of money potential is quantum computing. Cause that's an issue. Like with IO and Q and RGTI, you've already started to see some like of the, of the revenue of filter through, but I don't think that's just, again, we're just scratching the surface with it.
Quantum computing, if you're not familiar, and I wasn't, so I had to look this up. Like traditional computer uses zeros and ones to reach conclusions to solve problems. Whereas quantum computers use zero one or both at the same time with super superposition.
So like it has so many more results because it's, it's thinking outside the zero one box. It's dynamic and it's intertwined and kind of like the relativity theory. So in 2026, quantum computing, quantum computing is expected to move from potential technology where like, that's where it's been like the last couple of years.
Like, Oh, it's there's, there's a potential for quantum computing to actually practical products with companies like IBM aiming for quantum advantage and commercially viable systems. The progress that we're going to see in 2026 will likely involve hybrid integration with classical high-performance computing advancements in error correction and domain-specific applications in area like chemistry and optimization. This is going to be actually big for other, other industries to actually innovate outside of this, because quantum computing has actually been a bottleneck for a lot of other actual like scientific disciplines and principles.
Now the current system has there's no like fault tolerance associated with it, but the computers coming out down the road are actually going to have fault tolerant computing, which is basically focused on building a mature ecosystem that can bridge classical and quantum systems. That's going to be probably 2028 to 2030 around there. But like for the meantime, like people that actually said quantum computing has potential, I'm going to invest in it.
They're going to be making a shit ton of money. I mean, obviously the IONQ and RGTI, which I mentioned, but aside from that, the big boys are coming out to play with a Microsoft, MSFT, Google, G O O G L IBM and NVIDIA. Again, I like NVIDIA the most out of all these power players in this area.
A lot of people think that's sacrilege because IONQ is like everyone's favorite. Again, because I want income though, I'm basically going to be using the round hill or you can even do defiance if you want to. I would stick away and stay away from Yieldmax.
So I'm going with NBDW. That's my pick, but they also have a Google one, which is G O O W and they also have a Microsoft one, which is MSFW and they all pay weekly and their rates aren't ludicrous. Like it's 60 to 80%.
So basically you're, you're capping your upside with all the round hills, but you're, you're taking your upside in the form of a dividend payout, which sometimes is return on cash and our return on capital. Other times it's like a legitimate dividend, but I'm okay with that. And if you would've got into NBDA, NVIDIA's actual stock back when it did that stock split, like we actually got in, you'd be ahead of the curve.
So if any of the, if any of the ones I just mentioned, NVIDIA, IBM, Google, Microsoft, INOQ or RGTI do a stock split, jump in, get into it. Cause generally speaking, when a, when a company does a stock split, not a reverse stock split, when they do a stock split, the stock will go down to the price where the split comes in. But that generally like 85% of the time they go back up to where they were prior to the split.
And it's more likely with these big companies, especially during an AI boom, and they're especially the ones getting into this quantum computing. And if you want a more conservative approach to the tech boom, there are closing the funds like JEPQ, which we've been in for five years now. JEPI, which I don't like as much as JEPQ or NBXG, which we've been in again for like four years.
I like JEPQ the best of the closing the funds I just mentioned. But we do also have NBXG. We do have NBXG.
I really like NBDW for the quantum computing and AI component. Because it holds shares of the underlying stock. So you do get some price appreciation.
You will get some price appreciation if that does take off, like we think it will. Now, one of the themes that's going to be basically present for all of 2026, whether you like it or not, is interest rate cuts and labor markets softening. There's a vicious circle here where because the labor market is softening, the Fed will cut interest rates because the Fed cut interest rates.
The labor market may continue to weaken, thus leading to more rate cuts. Pigeonholing. With rate cuts, I do.
I said in 2025 that I expected BDCs to do pretty well. I was wrong in that regard. But I think 2026 is going to be a really good year for certain BDCs.
Hercules Capital, HTGC, Main Street Capital, MAIN, ARCC, which we mentioned before when it came to lending to AI, but they're obviously a BDC. Fisker Capital, FSK, and OBDC should all do really awesome in your portfolio. We currently hold Hercules, HTGC, ARCC in the retirement account, and we have FSK in the van life portfolio.
And I think FSK and ARCC will be the best of those. Those are my two picks. I think FSK will actually return the most out of all the ones I just listed.
That's not because I think it's better to ran. It's because they had earnings come out and they had a really bad earnings report with defaults going up and their stock tanked from like $20 down to like $15. I think they're going to recoup all that back, but they'll be back to where they were in 2024.
So MAIN was one that's usually pretty popular and it was overvalued for a while. Are you changing sentiment about the valuation of that one because of what's coming? I'm not. I think it'll with its total return will be high, pretty high in 2026, but it's been gradually coming back down.
It went down. When we sold our shares in it, it was at 2.1 ish around their price to NAV, and it's currently like 1.7. So it went down a lot, but actually I think it bought it out at like 1.5, 6, 1.6, somewhere around there is where it bought it out. Then it's gradually started to creep up again.
I do believe we will see it revisit the 1.6 to 1 price to NAV, and then you can just dump your money in there. Of all those ones I just mentioned though, MAIN's the most, I don't want to say this, they're the most conscientious when it comes to their dividend. Their dividend is only like 5%.
Conscientious? You mean conservative? Conscientious. They're really worried about their dividend and their payout ratio. I mean, it could be conservative as well.
Perkins Capital's at 10%. ARCC's at like 9%. Fisker's at like 18%, but that's because the price drops apart, and OBDC is like at 12%.
The Main Street's like the odd man out there, because I think it's like 5%. It's ridiculous. The next area where I think we're going to hear some more discussion about, and something we haven't heard a lot of, I don't hear a lot of experts talk about it, is stagflation.
We've brought it up a couple of times. I don't think it's a certainty, but it's starting to get more pub in the media. You were so early to the game on that one.
2026 could be a year, like a period of stagflation, which is characterized by slow economic growth and high inflation. We have the high inflation. It's just a matter of the economic growth component.
Yeah. How's that going to go? Because the thing is, if people are losing jobs, they're not going to have money to put back into the economy. But if job businesses are technically making more money because they're not paying people, that's a really interesting conundrum.
Well, that should lower prices in theory, if their industry costs are less because of the robots, they should be able to lower the prices. But there's the initial investment of cost. Lowering prices is not something that companies do, even when costs aren't as much as they used to be.
I think in reference with the job market, this stagflation is going to be really bad, actually. Some analysts are currently pointing to a stagflation light scenario, which is already beginning. Economic growth is not as much as they predicted.
Although, there was a report that came out this morning that the economy grew by 4.3% GDP last quarter, which I don't really put a lot of faith into because basically any information coming out of the Trump regime, I don't listen to. I actually go out and I find independent media sources because the narrative for the Trump regime is everything's great. We have the best economy and they don't care about data that would disprove that.
I don't like it. Then we have the government shutdown where they just basically didn't put out any data for weeks. One of the things that the market relies on, whether you like it or not, is reliable, consistent data.
Right. Metrics data. But there are some warning signs currently for sluggish GDP growth and inflation and the softening labor market, which we've already discussed.
Unemployment's not yet at a level where they'll all freak out. Yet. But the trade policy is ass.
I mean, you can say what you want about tariffs, they're ass from a trade component. Geopolitical uncertainty because there's an ongoing war. And then the crazy person that's in the one war was talking about invading Europe if they actually help Ukraine.
And then we have the United States threatening to go to war with Venezuela. There's a lot of geopolitical uncertainty. And the last factor would be a potential shift in the Federal Reserve policy priorities.
Like right now they're worried about the labor market, but if this shifts to where they're worried about inflation, that could just throw everything monkey wrench in everything. For all those reasons, these two I like both of them, WIW and SBAR. They're both like WIW specifically is an inflation protection where they trade like treasuries and Federal Reserve tip things.
And SBAR, again, they trade treasuries. You mean T-bills or tip something different? Tip something different. That's an inflation protected treasury.
Oh, that's right. I've asked this like six times. I don't know why my brain can not etch that one in.
And SBAR. So I like both WIW and SBAR for this reason. I think you should have probably, depending on how you feel about the economy, I would have at least 5% of my portfolio in something that combats inflation and the potential for stagflation.
We mentioned it earlier and I'll bring it up again. Market volatility is going to be crazy in 2026. I mean, no matter what, if you're a bull or a bear, it doesn't matter.
It's basically one day rate cuts will send stocks higher. The next day rate cuts will mean a softening economy, which causes stocks to drop. Some weeks you have good news is good news.
And some weeks you have good news is bad news. You see it with earnings reports where earnings are really good, but then people are like, what about their AI budget? Because of that, volatility is just going to be crazy. And I mean, the defensive positioning in your portfolio is essential.
The best defense traditionally have been dividend aristocrats and Kings. So whichever is on sale, we had a pretty good drop in November. So Target, TGT, Kimberly Morgan, KMB, I forget what PPG stands for.
PPG, H2O, SCL are all examples of undervalued dividend growth stocks. I like Target and Kimberly KMB. We actually just put a lump sum into KMB and H2O.
Yep, we did. I like both of those. And I think you're probably, depending again, how you feel about the economy, you probably want to have at least 25% of your portfolio in dividend growers that are defensive in nature.
That's my opinion. The next area where I think it's, this is a weird one, actually. I was actually going to ask you about real estate because I think we ended up selling the condo pretty much like at peak market.
Real estate is going to benefit from rate cuts, but how are they going to benefit? Are there going to all of a sudden be more houses built? Probably not. Because there's a group of people that control pretty much like 80% of the real estate and they want people to buy the real overvalued. My inkling in this is because the real estate trusts will have more money because of the rate cuts and the higher costs of housing.
The rate cuts mean like they're borrowing money at a lower rate, but they have locked in higher rates of the current people. And because there's a limited supply of houses, they're going to generate more money from those limited supply houses. But I think the ones that are actually going to benefit the most are the ones that will pivot and move into AI-driven stuff and more data storage.
What I mean by AI-driven stuff is like AI assistance. We just talked to our agent last week and he said they're actually starting to implement AI assistance for like the AI. They have AI staging programs.
Do all the work with scheduling appointments and visits. They will actually- They're writing the listings. Yeah, they do the listings.
They actually do the staging. So companies- I'm hoping they actually get into saving costs and the title fees and all that other- I'm hoping. I'm weird like this, but I want there to be like whenever you have a listing, the real estate company puts a robot on the porch and any time that there's a show in the house, the robot comes alive and opens the door and walks around because that'll save money on real estate agents and things of that nature.
That's absolutely hilarious. A robot in the house that just tours the house with you. Yeah.
Gives you the button code rolling. If you're not familiar, real estate trusts are required by law to pay 90% of their taxable income and because that most REITs take on debt with generally with bonds or issue new shares to fund research, development and or expansion. So you should be able to research and find which REITs are expanding into AI stuff.
And usually that means just data centers, but like I said, they're starting to actually go into the AI-driven stuff when it So that means DLR, that means Iron Mountain, IRM, CDP, which is a smaller one that few know about that is a U.S. government, U.S. government contractors data center REIT. A lot of people don't know about that CDP. Did you just find that one? No, I found it a while ago.
I just didn't like it because we want income. I actually like the closing and fund JRS, but any of those DLR, IRM or CDP would be well, they're doing pretty well when it comes to the AI component for real estate. We got in DLR, so.
Yeah. Okay. Next one is financials.
We're revisiting financials from 2025. When in 2025, I said that the big banks would outperform the regional banks, which happened, but we're not, again, we're saying financials should have a decent 2026, but not all financial investments. Those that supply funding to data centers like Hercules Capital, HTTC or Horizon Financial, HRZN may be good for the very long term.
Owl, OWL, Fisker Capital, FSK, OBDC, BIZD, ARCC should all see better returns in 2026 and 2025. I do expect the disparity that happened in 2025 to between large banks and regional banks to shrink. And actually, I actually think that regional banks will outperform big banks in 2026.
Again. Just to catch up. I thought regional banks actually did better.
Big banks outperformed regional banks by two to one. Oh, I thought it was the other way around. So I think we're going to see coming back to the mean, or the median, however you want to say, where the regional banks will catch up.
But I really like Fisker and Hercules Capital, HTTC and FSK for the financial components. And then we have closing the funds that actually invest in data centers like AIO, which is an AI prevalent closing the fund that basically does things with AI, but they have a lot of data center investing. And NBXG, which we brought up before with JEPQ when it came to AI, I think NBXG will actually see a strong 2026 because of the financial component, not the AI component.
So I like both those closing the funds. That'll be the first half of this. And the second half will pick up in a second.