Predictions for 2026: Interest Rates, GDP, Stocks, Housing, and Economic Trends

0:00 Today's podcast is about predictions for 2026. Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd. Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner practitioner and senior vice president financial advisor at Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest registered investment advisors. We call it Something More because we'd like to talk not only about those important dollar and cents issues, but also the quality of life issues that make the money matters matter. Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and across the country. Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being with us. I'm Chris Boyd. I'm here with Jeff Perry, Russ Ball, Brian Regan.

0:41 We are all of the AMR team at Wealth Enhancement and glad to have you joining us. It is the 15th of December for this show to air and it is the beginning of Hanukkah. So for all those who celebrate Hanukkah, our Jewish friends, we wish you a happy Hanukkah. Additionally, before we talk about predictions, Brian's got a few predictions and we'll see if anyone else has any like crystal ball gazing that they want to share. But one of the things that I wanted to at least take a moment to talk about, we didn't get a chance to talk about the Fed's meeting recently and the direction that that implies and just maybe some things to take away from that.

1:29 I got the impression there was more dissent. It wasn't as kind of the same kind of continuity that we seem to see more frequently. Yeah, but at the same time, Brian, tell us a little bit about it. But in the process, what is this issue about data that was discussed when it came to jobs? It seemed like there was some discussion of that that came out of this meeting. Yeah, that was an interesting comment. So one of the things that Jay Powell said gave him comfort in cutting is he thinks the jobs data that he's seeing, which is lagged and out of date, is overstated by about 60,000 a month, which is a significant statement, right?

2:18 So he's basically saying, you know, if we're averaging 40,000, 50,000 a month, he actually thinks it's negative by 10,000 to 20,000. And is that a comment on the veracity of the data being compiled by the agency compiling it, or is it something that's referring to just there's this lag or whatever in data being fully presented? Is this a critique of some kind that he's making? I think it's a bit of both. You know, he says that they're doing their best with the data they have, which is not really the typical jobs data that you'd get from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the first Friday of every month.

3:07 They're compiling jobless claims and jolts reports and, you know, ADP and trying to come up with a number. And then the other side of that is, you know, the way that BLS conducts the surveys are, you know, can be looked at as, viewed as a little flawed, you know. That's not a new critique though. That's been around for a while, right? Well, I think the problem is people just aren't answering surveys like they used to. I know I don't. I always think who's the madman who's actually answering, wasting their time doing this stuff. The reality is they're just, people aren't doing it like they used to.

3:49 And, you know, if you keep just getting the same type of person who's willing to answer a survey, you know, from a phone call, you know, you're going to get a different kind of data. So, you know, there's some legitimate critiques there. And then, you know, the margin of error is very wide. I don't know off the top of my head, but I think it's around 200,000. So if you get a number that's 50 ,000, that could be anywhere between plus 250 and minus 150, right? So, you know, saying that it's overstated by 60,000 isn't too great of a statement in and of itself when you think of the margin of, the stated margin of error.

4:32 Anyways, this is very wide. So, you know, it's the best we have. They're doing the best they can with the data they have. And, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if the jobs data was overstated. I mean, anecdotally, you don't get the feeling that the job market's very robust. So, you know, to me, it seems reasonable, you know. Jeff, so what was the result? Quarter point reduction? Yeah, quarter point in the Fed funds rate, which was as expected. Although, you know, usually when as expected happens, the market either does nothing or sells off, you know, buy the rumor, sell the news, right?

5:17 But the day of the Federal Reserve cut, at the time of Powell's comments, the market had a great day. So it was a little bit, I found a little surprising because it wasn't dovish, you know, wasn't like, oh, we're going to keep rolling this along. It was kind of hawkish, actually, like maybe one next year, not maybe one in January, maybe one next year. And we're data dependent and all the things he usually says, but the market seemed to like it, whatever he said. And back to your dissents, there were two of the Fed presidents that said no cut should be had, no reduction.

6:03 And there was one, the most recent appointment by Trump, who voted against it because he wanted a 50% basis point cut. So not enough, right? Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, majority agreed to the quarter point cut. So that's where we are. And so where does that leave us for a rate range in the neighborhood of three and a half percent? Three and a half to 375. Yep. Okay. All right. So if you have money market funds, if you have high interest savings accounts, you probably will see those yields come down a little bit over treasury rates will probably come down a little bit.

6:44 CDs, yep. Some of these will start to work their way into the rates we feel as consumers and the way we do our savings. On the other hand, you know, not so much necessarily when it comes to mortgage rates or whatever, though they seem to have come down from their highs. Anyone know offhand where mortgage rates are these days? Mortgage, about 6.4, 30 year. Yeah, that's good. Common man on the street. But better than the sevens. And we had seen not too long ago. Yeah. Common man on the street hearing of a rate point cut.

7:26 And, you know, we've had three of them now, you know, so far this year. Yeah. Might think that mortgage should come down more, right? Or even bonds, bond yields should come down more. And in this time period, like the 10 year has gone up and down, but it really hasn't moved substantially based upon these rate cuts. So do I hear a prediction in the comments coming from Jeff Perry? Well, that is part of the title. Yeah, I'll translate that, yeah. Where do you want the prediction of rate cuts or long term rate cuts or long term reductions or bonds?

8:07 There's a lot here. You tell me. My first prediction of the podcast is that they will be more than one interest rate cut next year. I'm not really going on a big limb here. I'm not giving a number. Not rate change, but rate cut. Yeah, Federal Reserve rate cuts, there will be more than one, which is where the chairman said yesterday that that's most likely. So I'm saying there's going to be more. All right. There you go. You heard it here first. I'll go out on a limb. I'll go out on a limb a little further than Jeff. I think there's going to be at least three cuts. All right. That's further than I went, for sure. At least 75. And I think there's a high probability that's...

8:51 How many notes can you name that tune in? You probably don't know that reference. Name that tune. But do you want to go further on that limb, Russ? That's where I was going with that. Four rate cuts. I love it. You guys can be right and I'm not wrong. Oh my goodness. All right. So in any case... So can I explain my... Give my reasoning for at least three before we move on? And I think this is a great segue. So the president's going to be nominating his own Fed chair in April or May. That is an excellent point.

9:31 And he has made no bones about the fact that he thinks rates should be zero. And I think he's going to put in a puppet. And it's probably going to be Kevin Hatchet. Bias is showing. I mean, the reality of the situation is showing. That's what he's indicated he intends to do. I follow your logic here. All I'm doing is repeating what our furious leader says every day. I have to defend something. I don't think he's suggested that his next Fed president will be a puppet.

10:11 Well, it's going to be Kevin Hatchet. Or at least that is the expectation. And Kevin Hatchet has been nothing but a puppet for the president. There's no other way to put it. In the role that he's in. History is full of appointments being made to people who... Prognosticators, experts had opinions about what they would do. And then they don't do them. Well, I honestly hope you're right and hope I'm wrong. But I think he's the next Arthur Burns. And if people are unfamiliar with who Arthur Burns is, he was a Nixon puppet at the Federal Reserve who kept rates low for too long.

10:54 And inflation grew well out of control. And I expect he's going to be closer to that than Ben Bernanke or Jay Powell or Paul Volcker for that matter. So this is about expectations and predictions. That's what I expect. At least three cuts. All right, excellent. I get the rationale anyway. The idea that there's going to be a new Fed chair and probably there may even be some other turnover as well. People may resign as well with the new leadership and such. So I think that makes sense.

11:36 I follow your rationale. So Brian, you had the idea of talking about some predictions. So let me turn things to you for a minute or two. What did you have in mind for some of your predictions for the year? Yeah, so I did write an article on this. And I'm hoping to have it posted before the end of the year. So hopefully people can listen to this podcast, but also review it on our website in the next couple of weeks. But we just talked about the Fed funds and we talked about mortgages. And that's interesting because number one and number two are related. I think the US CPI, which is inflation, not the Fed's preferred measure, but a widely followed measure of inflation, will stay above 3 % until the second half of 2026.

12:27 Why do I think that? That is when the effects of tariffs will roll off. What was that? You think it will do what, CPI? Stay above 3% until the second half of 2026. So right now it's above 3%. It's not significantly above 3%. It's at 3.03 for the US Core Consumer Price Index right now. And I think it's going to remain there for at least another six months, which is tough news, right? And if my prediction on the Federal Reserve that we're going to be cutting for the sake of cutting, it could stay higher for much longer.

13:10 You know, I also think it's quite possible that we're going to need those cuts. And part of the reason why I think we might need those cuts is because I think wealthier, older people, for the most part, have really been doing well with this risk -free interest rate of 5% for the last few years. I think it's been great, right, for them. And I think there's going to be, you know, a slowdown in the wealth effect when they start getting 3.5% or 3%. And I think in order to stimulate more borrowing, you're going to need to cut significantly more than that. So I do think, you know, it's inevitable that we're probably going to have more than one next year, but I also think, you know, it could very well be justified.

13:55 Now on mortgages, that was my, you know, this isn't about mortgages, but it's related to mortgages and interest rates. I think we're going to have a, I think the U.S. single family home price is going to fall by 5% year over year at some point in 2026. And that's a pretty lofty prediction because home prices don't typically fall. You know, there's been a handful of years when it's actually happened. But I'm looking at a chart right now from Redfin, and there are 500,000 more sellers than buyers right now. And existing family homes, you're saying?

14:35 Just U.S. single family homes, whether existing or new. I don't think the metric that I pulled differentiates. I just think it's single family homes. And how many more you said right now? It's 500,000 more, 530,000 more sellers than buyers right now. So what I think is happening is we have this situation where people want to sell for one reason or another, but they either own their home outright, which a lot of people do in this country. Jeff, you might know better than me, but I think the number is more than 50 % now.

15:16 Or they have a very low interest rate, so they can sit on it for a long time. And I think people are anchoring to prices that just aren't relevant to the market right now. Like high watermark kind of numbers, you're saying? Yeah, so we're not having any transactions right now. And I don't think that's sustainable. And I think we're going to see prices come down, especially if mortgage rates don't come down, which I think is a possibility. Yeah, I agree with Brian on that. I look at it as maybe simpler on housing prices. It's more of, in my mind, a correction. Housing prices don't typically go down, I agree, but housing prices don't typically go up like they did COVID and such.

16:02 So it needs to come back to where the market is, I guess is the best way I can say it. Brian, you've often talked about the issue that there's an inadequate supply to meet the needs of housing. And that has been a factor in the pricing going up so much. Has that changed much in terms of new homes being built? Or is there an increase in supply? I mean, there's always an increase in supply, and more of the existing homes are coming out of the market. But we had a dearth of supply for years in the post-COVID era.

16:43 And it's getting better, but it's not good. Maybe that's going to keep a floor on these prices. But I don't think we'll really know until the spring market hits. We've talked before about how a lot of the home buying and selling happens between April and August. And I think that's going to be the case, and it's going to be interesting to see what happens then. Sorry, Chris, I don't have the numbers in front of me. I know that they're higher. The supply is higher, both in existing and new home sales. Well, it's maybe part of the factor in thinking about prices, right? And I would think regionally and location may be a big factor in answering some of those questions.

17:31 It's not uniform across the country. And what segment of the market? I think builders are building, certainly. But if they have buyers at the upper price range, I think the market that needs to be built is the entry-level market. I think that's where the deficit is. Right, right. I bet others in the room would agree. Yeah. I mean, the first-time home buyer, even whether Massachusetts and the Cape, where Russ and Chris are, and Boston, where Brian is, those markets are very resilient because there's just virtually no new inventory coming on.

18:12 Down here in Florida, where I am, there's plenty of building. But if you don't have... It's geared toward a certain... If you don't have $500,000 or you can't handle the $500,000 mortgage range, there's not a lot of options and not a lot of building. And as long as there's a demand, which there is here for houses, you know, $500 ,000 to $1,000,000 is where the demand is. Why wouldn't a builder, without some incentive, build houses that cost that much and make that much profit rather than building a house for $250,000 or $300,000? That's a good point. I mean, the bottom line is, right, if I were to buy my house today, the same one I'm sitting in right now, my mortgage would be 50% higher.

18:59 That's ridiculous. Between cost and interest rates, right? Something has to give. And it's going to happen one way or another. I just, you know, it's anybody's guess on how it's going to happen. All right. So we've heard some... This is interesting stuff. Some thoughts about real estate, thoughts about mortgages, thoughts about CPI, interest rates. What else do you have on your radar, Brian, that you're thinking about? Or if anyone else has any predictions, feel free to chime in. This was Brian's thoughts. I have a question for Brian. I don't know if he's prepared to answer it, but I bet he is. GDP forecast.

19:42 1.8. I'm going to up that. Ready? 2.5. From your voice to God's ears. I'm very optimistic. There's going to be some stimulus from the one big, beautiful bill. There's going to be some bigger tax returns coming. Exports are up, at least this past month. So I'm optimistic. Yeah, I think, you know, you might be right. Potential GDP is 2%. You know, and that this kind of moves nicely into my next prediction. And that is that the hyperscalers will not cut spending.

20:25 You know, I think if that keeps happening, you know, your 2.5% prediction might very well be accurate. Or, you know, possibly even low, right? You know, when NVIDIA's last earnings call, they predicted that the hyperscalers would raise their spending to $600 billion in 2026. So are you solely focusing hyperscaler as an AI spend? Or are you including something else in there? So I think hyperscalers to me are Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft. These are the big companies that are scaling cloud computing and, you know, using or trying to scale their LLM model, their large language models.

21:10 So those are the hyperscalers to me. They are spending an enormous amount of money. You can actually throw Oracle in there too. And you should throw Oracle in there. And I don't think anyone's going to stop spending in 2026. And my evidence for this is what Jensen Wong of NVIDIA said on the last earnings call. They expect $500 billion in revenue in 2026, which was incredible that he laid out a full year of revenue guidance. That is unheard of. I mean, normally you get one quarter if you're lucky. So the fact that a whole year is remarkable. And, you know, I think a lot of people are waiting with bated breath for that to turn. And I think it's going to turn at some point.

21:51 I just don't think it's going to happen in 2026. And to your point, I think that's going to be very helpful to GDP. And I think, you know, you're right. You know, we're going to have tax cuts and refunds are going to be more generous here in the first half of 2026 as well. And that might spur, you know, consumer spending. So I didn't jot it down. What was the prediction regarding hyperscalers? That they will not cut spending. Okay. Which is what people are worried about for if there's a bubble kind of thing. Right. And my main source of evidence for this is the one year of guidance that NVIDIA gave us. Now, NVIDIA could be wrong, right? But to me, that's the best guidepost we have.

22:33 None of this is, you know, I have 10 predictions here. I say I'm hoping about 600. I would consider that good, right? So, you know, none of this is set in stone, obviously. Sure. But I think, you know, Jeff's GDP estimate. And I threw out 1.7 because I think we're going to be a little bit under potential. That's why I said 1.7. I said 1.8. Do you want to change it to 1.7? 1.7, 1.8. I mean, we're splitting hairs, you know. It's going to be under potential. You could call it 1.8, you could call it 1.7. I'll change it to 1.7. Okay. But I also think the S&P 500 is going to touch 7,800 at some point. Um, you know, that might seem kind of bullish to people.

23:15 It's right in line with my fair value evaluation. So, you know, I'm expecting or hoping that, you know, we're going to have another good year in 2026. And I think part of that is what kind of percentage move that would represent today? I think when I did this, it was 14%. I don't have it in front of me. That's all right. I'm going to see. Well, you guys, if you guys want to chat amongst yourselves or whatever. What's that Mike Myers thing? Talk amongst yourselves. Yeah, yeah. I'll try to get it up.

23:55 I would be very happy if that prediction is right. All right. Who would be upset with that, right? I'm kind of waiting for the correction, but I'm not really waiting for it. I don't like to have a pile of money on the sideline or something. I just like they do come regularly and we haven't had a real. Yeah, right. Yeah, it doesn't mean a little more of that. Doesn't mean we can't have a correction and 7800. No, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's very plausible. I mean, just look at what we had this year, right? We had a sizable correction in April, a very sizable correction in April. I mean, a downright scare, right? Yeah, liberation day correction.

24:35 Yeah, where people were liberated from their mental capacity. It seemed like on that day, but because it was absolutely crazy. And thank God that people moved on. I was scared when they talked about the idea of the total restructuring of our trade policy. And then, fortunately, it was a little less extreme than it was initially. It was totally nuts. I mean, there's no doubt about it. They backed off completely. We had what, like 145% tariff on China. We had like a 90% tariff on Vietnam. I mean, that was going to stop the economy in its tracks. And thank God we've come back from that.

25:15 And it's been great for the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is up 18.4 % through last Thursday, which was a good number. That's a number I have in front of me right now. The All-Country World Index, which includes international stocks on a market cap basis, is up 22.5%. And that's one of the interesting stories of 2025, that the vast outperformance of international stocks versus domestic stocks is wild. And I think we haven't seen that in a very, very long time. That's a good question. Let's talk about that for a moment. Before we do, I don't want to leave tariffs. I have a prediction.

25:56 OK. It will be in 2026. I predict the Supreme Court will strike down all or part of the president's unilateral authority on tariffs. All right. I was looking up the betting odds on this the other day. And there's a 25% chance that the Supreme Court upholds his tariffs on the betting odds. Well, I'm in the money then. You're in the money. I think legally, it's a fastball down the middle. But politically, it's a 25% chance that they'll do something else.

26:39 Legally, it's an easy case to me. Historically, there's some reasons to doubt that. But I believe that'll happen in the 2026 spring decisions. So I think, Brian, when it comes to the dollar, you've had sort of a general inclination to think that it would be reasonable to see the dollar decline continue. And so similarly, the question about you mentioned international stocks having outperformed this year, which is first in a while. We haven't seen that in many years.

27:21 So is it time to be less US -centric and more of a portfolio weight in international stocks? Relative, we've always been pretty underweight international stocks. What's your thought about the forecast for what may come when it comes to predictions for how international, will it continue to fare well? Good question. So if you're going to- First of all, I think the dollar part of it is part of that equation, right?

28:05 You know, what happens with the dollar is maybe a factor in some of your thinking on that, right? So I don't have a good guess on what the dollar is going to do. And you're right. I think we've had quite the tailwind from the dollar here in 2025. The dollar's down 10% year to date, 10.1% year to date, the dollar index. But that decline has stopped. It stopped really over the summer, right? It kind of bottomed and it's actually up a little bit. It was down 11.5% at one point.

28:47 So it seems to be, if you just look at the chart, that the dollar is leveling off. And if that continues, then the dollar decline is no longer going to be a tailwind for international stocks. And if you think that all international stocks on a dollar basis, which is, as Americans, we should measure it on a dollar basis, have gotten a 10% surge in a local currency situation, it's, you know, the outperformance is not as strong as it might appear. So, you know, I believe international stocks on the whole, I quoted the Acquia earlier, but I think they've done 30% this year, strip away 10%. They've done 20%, still better than the S &P 500, but not much, right?

29:31 And if you think that crazy dollar decline that happened, you know, starting with the anticipation of tariffs and then the actual liberation day, it's recovered since then. And if you think that that move is done, well, I wouldn't be so bullish on international stocks just because of the dollar, right? It seems like that move is done. You know, anything crazy can happen, as we know. I mean, April 2nd was absolutely crazy and didn't make any sense whatsoever. So, you know, it's certainly possible that could happen. It just seems like we're done with that situation. On the other hand, one of my predictions is that European countries, developed European countries are going to continue to spend on military and defense.

30:16 And, you know, I, quite frankly, was talked into this by one of my wealth enhancement colleagues who, he just said, hey, look, do you think that the European countries are confident in their historical position in NATO? Meaning, is the United States still going to continue to fund them militarily and defend them as they historically have? But there's no way they have the same trust that they did, you know, a year ago. It's just, you know, it would be silly if they did. At the same time, you know, Russia invaded one of their close neighbors and is still at war with Ukraine.

30:58 And Germany has, you know, started to do some deficit spending. Japan has started to do some deficit spending. So, you know, we still have an ongoing saga in the Taiwan Strait, right? 85% of China's military is focused on the Taiwan Strait right now. So, you know, I think my colleague, his name is Terry Zhao, he, I think he's right. And, you know, I took his prediction and made it my own. So I'll give him credit where credit is due. But I think that that's likely. And I think that could be a tailwind for international stocks in 2026.

31:42 But we're emerging market stocks, you know, quote, unquote, value stocks led in 2026. I think it's going to be more of a developed market in 20, I mean, 2025. I think it's going to be more of a developed market in 2026. Anything to add to any of those either? Yes, that's that's really interesting. I like this, I'm enjoying this. I don't know if you have any others, but I think we're probably at a point where we can put a pin in our conversation. Is there anything else you want to add to the predictions before we wrap up? Brian? Well, we talked about Fed cuts and we talked briefly about how Fed Chair Powell thinks the employment situation is overstated right now in the data.

32:28 One of my reasonings for Fed cuts is because, you know, the new chair, but I also think the economy may need the support. We talked about that. And along those lines, I think continuing claims will go over two million. So the reasoning for that is I just don't think there's a lot of robust hiring. I don't think there's much firing either. But we haven't been over two million since 2021. We're at 1.94 right now. So this is it's trending in that direction. And if the trend continues, which, you know, the data is very, let's say, fairly static, but it hasn't been there in four years.

33:09 So, you know, I think that's probably I think that's likely. I think that's likely as the economy is, you know, I think below potential. Jeff thinks is above potential. I hope I'm wrong on this one. But I think I think that that's more likely than not, in my opinion. Yeah, I'll take the under on that. Hope you're right. Because of a strong economy and because of the decrease in immigration and the deportation of individuals here, I think that'll have a downward impact on unemployment. All right. What about discussion? Sorry, going back to concerns about Fed independence, like you feel like that might have a impact on markets every time, you know, Powell's been under threat.

34:01 The market has an immediate reaction. Do you think that will kind of be like a drawn out experience where the market kind of bakes it in over time or I don't know, what are your what's your take on that, Brian? Well, it would have been very bad if he pushed him out before the end of his tenure. That would have that would have just said, you know, we're throwing out the rule of law in the United States and we're doing whatever whatever, you know, the premier wants. And I'm very thankful that that did not happen. And we're going to do this in a in a reasonable way. And I think that's why the 10 year treasury, for example, is at four point one percent instead of six percent, because, you know, that didn't happen.

34:44 And hopefully, you know, Jeff is right. And, you know, this continued level headedness that I think we've seen over the last seven months, you know, relative level headedness hopefully continues into 2026. But yeah, I think for the record, I'm not predicting level headedness. It's all relative, right? Yeah, it's all relative. Yeah, that's funny. All right. Well, this was fun. Good topic. Good conversation. You know, obviously, when it comes to portfolio management and obviously all these things fit into the context of the financial plan, we talk about that quite often.

35:30 But when it comes to these kind of predictions, it probably is worth talking about how does this work into thinking about portfolio management? And I would just add that it's somewhat on the edges. You know, when we think about our portfolio designs and strategies, we do have to think about how some of these factors could be an influence and how that might impact what we do. But ultimately, Brian, maybe it's worth just a little bit of perspective as though as much as this is kind of interesting to think about, when does it become relevant to how one handles their portfolio and what changes are made within a portfolio design?

36:14 I just don't want it to be the impression that some of these whims are, you know, it's kind of interesting and thought provoking. But when does it really affect portfolio structure? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So, you know, we talked about how I'm expecting based on my fair value analysis, a 14% return is my median expectation for the next 12 months, right? If that expected return was 7% instead of 14%, well, we'd probably be taking a whole lot less risk, right? We'd probably be more into the fixed income. Why? Because, well, a 10 year treasury, I can get 4% plus a spread, call it one and a half.

36:57 You know, I can get five and a half in an investment grade bond. I can get seven from a high yield bond. Why would I take equity like risk when I can take high yield risk, right? There would be a trade off. But we are expecting a premium in the stock market. Now, anything can happen in the stock market, right? The standard deviation is 20%, let's give it, let's call it, right? So if I think the median expected return is 14%, that means that, you know, I could say with 65% confidence that it could be anywhere between negative 6% and positive 34%, right? That's a huge range. And I could say with 95% confidence, you know, which is two standard deviations, that could be anywhere between negative 26 and, you know, a gigantic number in the other direction.

37:46 So what am I saying? And I also say that I expect, I said this in the last webinar, that I think the tails are fat in the return distribution, which means that it's a fun way of saying, I think there's going to be outsized amount of volatility. So like Jeff said before, you know, we could have a correction and we could still have a 14% return. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the way the world is set up right now, the investing landscape is set up right I think that is more likely in 2026 than, you know, an average year. So, you know, that all goes into our portfolio positioning, right? We talked about international stocks.

38:26 How much international do you want to have? Do you want to have developed? Do you want to have emerging markets? You know, we did a lot of things right in 2025, but we did not have emerging markets to any significant degree. And we had to make up for that, you know, through alternatives, through good sector selection. There are good decisions that helped. Right. You know, one of my predictions that we did not get to was about private credit and how I think it's going to continue to make headlines. You know, that's in a not so good way. In a not so good way. We haven't had private credit in the portfolio and it's not from people trying, it's not from a lack of people trying to sell it, sell it to us. You know, my inbox, just like every portfolio manager across the country is filled with people trying to sell us this high fee, underperforming junk.

39:15 And, you know, I guess I'm not mincing words today, right? What do you really think? Yeah. So, you know, that's, that's all that is, gets into the thought process and goes into the stew that makes up a, you know, a portfolio allocation. All right. Well said. So, you know, aspects of this are relevant and some of it is you kind of have a see how things evolve, see how things develop to make a play for how to benefit from some of these thoughts in your portfolio structuring. But one thing you can't do is say, I'm 100% confident in any of this, because then you're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble, right? You're going to be taking way too much risk one way or another.

39:58 You probability weight them in your mind, at least, right? And you think about how they work together and how they, and how they balance each other. Um, we have very few people that are in, in our, from our clientele that are a hundred percent stock. And if they are, they have a very, they have a diversified, you know, allocation, um, in their portfolio. So, you know, I, I think, um, you gotta have humility when we do this, we laugh, we disagree, and that's all fun. And it, and a lot of this does, you know, end up in the thought process of the portfolio. Um, but it has to be done with hard data and it has to be done with a, with a, with a huge amount of humility. And so as you approach next year and think about some of these issues, if you're not giving it the kind of thought that our team obviously does, and you think you could benefit from some assistance in how to position your portfolio, uh, what's working, what's not, don't hesitate to reach out to us.

40:53 This is the perfect time of year for scheduling a fresh look at the start of the year and evaluate. We work on a two meeting process. It is all complimentary. We review things fully and in the context of a financial plan, and we're here to help if you need the help. So with that, thanks everybody for the fun discussion until next time, keep striving for something more. Thank you for listening to something more with Chris Boyd. Call us for help, whether it's for financial planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns, or those quality of life issues that make the money matters matter. Whatever's on your mind, visit us at something more with chrisboyd.com or call us toll free at 866-771-8901, or send us your questions to amr-info at wealthenhancement.com.

41:46 You're listening to something more with Chris Boyd financial talk show wealth enhancement advisory services and Jay Christopher Boyd provide investment advice on an individual basis to clients. Only proper advice depends on a complete analysis of all facts and circumstances. The information given on this program is general financial comments and cannot be relied upon as pertaining to your specific situation. Wealth Enhancement Group cannot guarantee that using the information from this show will generate profits or ensure freedom from loss. Listeners should consult their own financial advisors or conduct their own due diligence before making any financial decisions.