Bald-Faced Predictions

what does 2026 hold?

Although I’ve been writing for Slope over twenty years, I don’t think I’ve ever indulged in the end-of-year prediction schtick. I suppose since I live every waking hour trying to predict the future, it’s never really occurred to me to make a special effort for the new year, but...........I feel like it! Thus, I’m going to make some easy predictions, some hard predictions, and some predictions about Slope itself. Check back in a year to see how I did!

The Easy Ones

• More Mass Shootings - there will be multiple mass shootings all over the United States, resulting in hundreds of tragic deaths. Republicans will offer thoughts and prayers. Democrats will demand common-sense gun control. Nothing will change, and a few days after each shooting, the conversation will have moved on to something else, like Karoline Leavitt’s lip filler or something.

• Trump will Keep Trumping - the President will continue to behave in the same puerile, narcissistic, malevolent, hate-filled, venal, and loathsome ways that he always had, but worse than ever as his mental condition deteriorates and as resistance builds up against him. Democrats will ask for thoughts and prayers. Republicans will demand common-sense citizen control. Nothing will change, and the Trump family will continue to carry on with their multi-billion dollar grift, flanked by the boisterous cheers of the inexplicable hodgepodge of simple-minded supporters.

• Zerohedge - the popular financial website, which many years ago was the greatest bastion of bearishness but has morphed into a politically supercharged permabull site, will continue to parrot anything and everything Goldman Sachs utters, perform daily deep-throat fellatio on the President, and put AI-generated women with giant tits as thumbnails for their blog posts, since that’s what incels do. What a fall from grace.

The Hard Ones

• Crypto will Crumble - if there was ANY year in history that should have blasted Bitcoin to hundreds of thousands of dollars, it was 2025. It received absolutely shameless political support, the GENIUS act, David Sacks, all the Trump co-conspirators (including the multiple crypto criminals your President has pardoned), massive positive media, and brokerages greasing the skids to get people to throw money at it. What was the result? Bitcoin was one of the few assets on the planet to actually go DOWN in value in the year, and Michael Saylor’s MSTR got cut in half. I think the jig is up and crypto is going to start puking all over itself. It’s going to be a riot, because crypto is the biggest financial scam ever concocted in human history.

• Inflation will Eat the Rich - by that I do not mean it will hurt the rich. The rich are doing just great, thanks so much. What I mean is that persistent inflation is going to keep hammering away at the psyches (and wallets) of everyday people, and over the course of the year, an increasing number of them are going to resent the rich with increasing fervor. It’ll be years before the billionaires get any sort of true comeuppance, but the foundation is going to get laid next year.

• AI will Stumble - How sick are you of hearing about Jensen Huang and Nvidia? Yeah? Me too. How about Sam Altman? Larry Ellison? Yep. Anyway, AI has been approximately 99.583% of the reason for market strength in 2025, and the bloom is already off the rose. I’m not saying there’s going to be some kind of catastrophe, but I think the notion of AI as some kind of panacea is going to fade badly, and it’s going to drag tech stocks down kicking and screaming. Triple-digits P/Es aren’t forever, ya know.

• Midterms will Shift the Balance - Trump is a very unpopular person, but distaste for the man will expand as more people become weary of his broken promises, his ridiculous pontifications, his ineptitude, and his increasingly obvious scams. The childish rejoinder of TDS will fall out of favor, as the diminishing portion of the population that doesn’t detest this man will be seen as hapless, gullible rubes with obvious character deficiencies. The midterm elections will be crucial, and while I think the Dems will retake the House, the net result will be a total stalemate government that’s even more useless than it is right now.

• Grifters will Fall from Grace - I’m talking about the hucksters, the fraudsters, the bullshit artists. I won’t name names, but I could rattle a dozen from memory. Here again, the public is going to get sick of these smiling, preening, posturing showmen (and an ostensibly grieving show-woman). We live in a world saturated by fakery, and as a person who is repelled by the phony, this disappoints me.

The Slope Ones

• Useful AI - I have quite a few plans in place for products and services on the site that are going to be AI-driven. Amazingly, they will actually be helpful and useful. Premium members are going to love them.

• Surge in Slopers - as a destination site, Slope is as popular as ever, but subscriptions have been in a slump since April. That’s going to change, and the market is going to make it happen. I will try to tamp down my simmering resentment against those who are only showing up once the market is getting hammered. Foul weather friends, I call them. Still, I cherish all my premium members, sooner or later, but I cherish those who really stick with me through thick and thin far more.

• Majority Age - On March 29th, Slope will turn twenty-one years old, which means my site will finally be able to drink legally. Considering how the world is arrayed against bears, this will be an exceptionally useful privilege at times.

The year 2025 was transformative for my family. I believe 2026 will be transformative for the market. I look forward to sharing it with you. Thanks for being a part of it, and you can count on me to give you a front row seat to the circus in which we all now live.