Ryan Knudson

And for Jason, intelligent investing comes down to a few basic principles.

Jason's job is to guide those investors.

And today, he's going to take some questions to set us on the right path for 2026.

Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knudson.

It's Monday, January 12th.

Coming up on the show, how to navigate the stock market intelligently in 2026.

So I tried to look this up before we spoke.

You've been writing this column since 2008-ish?

Yep.

So the one thing that I feel like is a theme that cuts across all of your columns over these years is that the best thing you can do as an investor is to just buy the market and hold it for the long run.

Would you still say that's true?

Why do you believe that just buying an index fund and holding it for as long as possible is the best strategy?

Okay, let's talk about 2025 for a minute.

A year ago, what did you think was going to happen in the market, and how does that compare to what actually happened in the market?

So what the hell?

Why?

Why did it go up?