Jason Zweig

despite Ukraine, despite tariffs, despite the stuff about the Fed, Gaza, you know, you name it, just went up.

Well, the stock market went up because corporate earnings went up.

And earnings went up in a period of...

You know, relatively low interest rates, exports by U.S.

companies did quite well, partly because the U.S.

dollar dropped a bit.

And all of those things combined to produce, you know, just enormous profits.

for U.S.

companies that are also being taxed at a somewhat lower rate thanks to, you know, legislation.

So, you know, when companies earn more money that gets taxed less, their stocks go up.

Well, I'm going to chicken out, but I think the best way to answer the question what is the stock market going to do in 2026 or what is any financial market going to do is really to say, well, what am I going to do?

And how can I conduct myself as an investor and position my portfolio so that whatever the market does, I can either respond in an appropriate way or choose not to respond at all because it isn't really called for.

No, I don't think so, because, you know, there's always something to worry about as an investor, and if there were nothing to worry about, that would be the most worrisome thing of all.

I'd be terrified if there were nothing to worry about.

What we do know about financial markets, and we know this from centuries of history, and we know it from human psychology, is that markets don't react...

to what people already expect.

Because that's already in the price of all the assets that are traded.

What markets react to is the unexpected.

So when we find ourselves worrying about the things we can already see, the one thing we can be pretty sure of is we're worrying about the wrong things.

Well, I think you'd be crazy not to be concerned about this.