This week, we dust off the crystal ball to deliver a “big banger” of an episode entirely focused on predictions for 2026. From the AI revolution to the future of the Magnificent Seven, we’re putting our reputations on the line.
In this episode:
🤖 AI’s Next Big Move: We debate which industries will benefit most from AI adoption, with a focus on manufacturing, logistics, and the surprise contender: insurance.
📉 Mag 7 Shakeup: A controversial take on why Apple might lose its dominant position by 2030.
🔮 The 2026 Crypto & Commodity Play: A heated debate on where to park value—will it be Uranium, Gold, or is Bitcoin destined to crush Silver?
🦁 WallStreetBets vs. The Wildlife: We review a Reddit poll on the “Best Stock of 2026” and give our verdict on their top picks, including ASTS and Reddit itself.
🚀 Portfolio Wars: Which of our personal holdings will see the biggest gains? We make the bull case for Rocket Lab, UiPath, and Coherus.
🛰️ The Space Race: Will ASTS make a commercial call before Starlink? Plus, will Rocket Lab’s Neutron finally reach orbit?
🎰 Vegas Bound: Details on the upcoming Wall Street Wildlife Patreon meetup in Las Vegas!
Segments:
00:00 Introduction & Christmas Recap
03:25 2026 Predictions Overview
05:10 Which Industry Benefits Most from AI? $SYM $LMND $OSCR
08:10 Who Wins the AI Agents Race? $PATH $GOOG
10:50 Magnificent Seven Shake-Up: Who Falls & Who Replaces Them? $AAPL $META
13:30 Tesla Robotaxis in Texas – Reality Check $TSLA
16:55 Most Valuable Company by Year-End $GOOG #SpaceX
19:17 Commodities Battle: Bitcoin, Gold, Silver, or Uranium? $BTC
23:40 Will the 10-Year Yield Exceed 6%?
26:40 Dollar Decline vs. Safe Havens $BTC $USD
29:20 Sovereign Debt Crisis – Will G7 Countries Survive?
33:35 Wall Street Bets Stock Picks – Best & Worst $PATH $DUOL $RKLB $RDDT $MELI
41:49 Most Overhyped Stocks $NVO $MMED $LLY $QUBT $RGTI $GOOG $IBM
46:52 Geopolitical Portfolio Positioning – Defense & Energy #Anduril $CEG $ONDS
51:32 Biggest M&A Deal of 2026 $RLAY $PRCT $LYFT
54:37 Highest Gainer in Our Portfolios $EOSE $MELI $CHRS
58:10 Broken Thesis in Our Portfolios $SLNH $GNS
01:02:14 Chainlink & Tier-1 Banks $LINK
01:05:40 ASTS vs. Starlink: First Commercial Call $ASTS #SpaceX
01:11:22 Rocket Lab: Neutron to Orbit? $RKLB
01:12:00 CEOs Citing Prediction Markets $COIN
01:15:43 Rapid Fire: Homes vs. Data Centers
01:16:34 Rapid Fire: Verified Human Tier
01:18:04 Rapid Fire: Tokenized Real Estate
01:19:00 Rapid Fire: AI Crime & Lawsuits
01:21:53 Badger vs. Greggs Sausage Rolls $GRG
01:23:11 Most Improbable Las Vegas Meetup Prediction
01:24:12 Portfolio Performance Battle
01:26:45 Predictions Wrap-Up
01:27:32 Market Bottlenecks in 2026
01:30:40 Las Vegas Meetup Update
Transcript
crisis that’s probably gonna happen sooner than later and people will need to really figure out for themselves that it’s not all about predictions and models. There’s the living left to be done.
I think there were like bets on. Or one of the poly market as to words he would say. And at the end of the call, he just literally went, he looked at it, he just read all the words, saw the bets, like cashed in for a bit of a joke.
I think it’s one of the largest tams in the whole world, so I’m not quite, you know, even the old legacy players will be fine for a long time.
I feel like it’s an essential part of the portfolio in a increasingly dangerous world defense and energy I suppose. cause you’ve gotta have energy independence and you’ve gotta be able to, you know, protect your way of life.
Welcome to the Deep Investing Jungle with your hosts Luke the Badger, Hallard, and Christophe the monkey. This week we are making our 2026 predictions. It’s a big banger of an episode.
Badge before we start predicting stuff, I need to check in with you and, uh, Santa’s accounting based on the loot you’ve received, naughty or nice?
Uh, was I naughty or nice? I think I was nice. I was nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you fooled the old bugger. How’d you pull that off?
We, so we are gonna have a bit of fun with this because we’re going to a new year party, and I can say it now because no one will hear it before we get there. Uh, I bought Katrina a Grinch outfit. Um, and so she was the Grinch on Christmas Day, and she’s gonna be the Grinch at the New Year party. We’ve had a friend.
Um, uh, and then we’re gonna do like a Savage Santa, we’ve organized at the Friend’s New Year party. So like everyone will be naughty at the party, I think.
Oh, that’s fantastic. Uh, uh and true to, true to your, your spirit. You know what, Santa got monkey.
What’s that?
It turns out that the chief complaint charged against me was that I’m working way too hard and not having enough fun. And so Santa both, and this is to Monkey, and Mrs. Monkey’s household delivered one the largest Lego set of all time, I believe the Star Wars millennial falcon,
I’ve seen
is that
beast. Yeah.
Yes, yes.
It’s that ginormous thing. So that’s, uh, that’s been happening. And I also got the Nintendo Switch too. Little, little, uh. A mobile gaming device on which I believe you could play Donkey Kong, the new, the, you know, the latest Donkey Kong, whatever it is, where you smash thing and, and make bananas. So, so monkey’s, uh, delighted.
That’s awesome. That was on, that was definitely on your like Santa wishlist. Right? I remember you talking about that in December.
Yes. But anything to make me have more fun apparently is, apparently I’m like the most boring, uh, dreadful hu uh, uh, sapt to be around. So here’s some more
here, we are here we are promoting our Vegas visit. Come hang out with these two really boring finance dudes.
Alright. Badge. So yeah, we’ll do some resolutions maybe in a, in a future episode, but today is mostly about predictions, so,
Yeah, so let’s, uh, let’s just get, talk big picture. About the predictions we wanna make We got a lot to get through. And you know what, this worries me a little bit ’cause I’m still feeling like the, the extra couple of kilos around my waistline from all the fricking drinking we did in episode one 12, just like a week ago.
Um, so we got like 20 plus predictions. That is a lot of shots at the end of 2026.
and worse, I have even worse news for you. Badge. I feel less comfortable than ever making any predictions given what’s happening now, and I’m experiencing this firsthand in the world of ai. Uh, we knew it back in 25 that things were gonna change very, very quickly, but now things are changing like by the week.
And so we feel we both felt so silly looking back as you were saying, to how could we have possibly thought X way back in December 25th? And I feel like we’re about to make complete baboons out of ourselves sometime by even mid-March. We might be like, what were we thinking?
well we did say in the, uh, in the wrap up episode last week, like we inverted reality at least once in our 2025 predictions. So, you know, maybe alpha is to be generated by doing the opposite of whatever you predict. I’ve definitely got that in my
Right? That’s one strategy to all our patons and all our YouTube channel listeners is take whatever we say, flip it all of reverse, Jim Kramer, and you’ll be gold. So badge. Let’s get going, huh? Uh,
dude, let’s get going.
first prediction is based on this giant gorilla in the midst ai, what specific industry. Is going to benefit the most by AI adoption in 26.
I’ve got one ticker, uh, in this space. We weren’t predicting companies, but it is one that’s been on my watch list for a little while. It’s symbiotic ticker, SYM, and they’re a warehouse automation company and they build like warehouse, warehouse automation systems for.
Companies in the US and Canada using ai. Like, I dunno much about them. It’s literally, I’ve barely started my research on this one, but it could be an interesting name to watch. How about you? Which industry are you thinking is gonna get hit or benefit the most from AI adoption?
Well badge two quick additional tickers in your segue. ’cause I’ve dabbled in this RR Rich Tech robotics and serve SERV. Add those two to, to your pile. Uh, I think you’re looking in a good place. Yeah. For me it’s a actually a straight shot. Uh. After doing my deep, deep diligence about lemonade, uh, before I added it to Monkey’s King of the Jungle portfolio, it became more obvious than ever to me that the one industry that is absolutely built to take advantage of ai.
And that’s insurance, because that’s statistics and probabilities. And there you go. And obviously Lemonade is the company that saw this before. Anybody else. So that’s basically my answer. Insurance companies taking advantage of that. So two Tickers, lemonade and Oscar, OSCR, which is healthcare insurance.
Same, same idea. One bracket point is, I wanted to say real estate because that’s the one I hope gets cracked, obviously with my tiny little baby, uh, uh, semi gambling position in the open door. But, uh, I think that’s gonna take more than, more than a year
I don’t, I don’t think I like Opendoor, but the insurance ideas are interesting. It is. It’s kind of contrarian a little bit because the world kind of assumed that AI might kill insurance to some extent, like maybe not like forward planning Insurance companies like Lemonade, like what does it mean to be an insurer when you’re like a Tesla and you’ve got a fleet of cars, are they just gonna self-insure and have like, you know, like a billion dollars in the bank to pay out any claims?
Does that take insurance companies out of the loop? Like, who knows? Like the whole at lease car insurance is gonna change dramatically. Vehicle insurance.
could be. Let’s not. Yeah. Uh, I think it’s one of the largest tams in the whole world, so I’m not quite, you know, even the old legacy players will be fine for a long time. But anyway, for me, it’s a straight indicator that I need more lemonade based on this particular view.
AI insurance. All right.
second prediction. Who will win the race for AI agents and how are they gonna do it?
Well, badge, I guess. Monkey’s gonna be talking about all his portfolio holdings based on this show, which, which actually makes sense, right? Come to think of it, right? If what we’re, what we’re predicting are the companies that you would wanna own based on your own understanding. So my, my clear straight shot here is, uh, UiPath ticker, PATH, because they are the ones that are now building on top of all the robotic agents that they had built for many years.
And they’re creating this meta orchestration layer that will help all the moving separate ar ai parts actually kind of synergize, which is an incredibly complex task. And I was listening to what’s his name from Tesla Carpathy. Talking about highest level of coding now is like everybody needs to relearn uh, uh, what they thought they knew because the thing is shifting so fast.
And so orchestration is my, is monkey’s big word of the year. And Path. UiPath is the one that’s gonna basically be the leader. Um, and monkeys betting big on this one. It’s time. It’s already, we saw in the last quarter the re there, it’s already starting to happen.
Nice. Very good. I’m gonna lean on my own portfolio too for this one. Um, like I took this as like, who is gonna have like, the dominant platform for AI agents? Like, you know, think of it like a virtual personal assistant that’s just kind of helping you. It seems like a no brainer. I hope this doesn’t turn into like an anti prediction, uh, alphabet.
Just with like, did the distribution they have with Android and like their monstrous space of first party data from what they got, like more than nine, 2 billion user products. Um, like how do they lose from there? Like, I’m, I’m obviously gonna be eating like humble Christmas cake pie. Uh, if they, if they fail, but yeah, like I called this many years ago.
I called it really specifically in May, 2025 with a tweet I posted that did some numbers and it seems to be playing out kind of as I expected.
Yes. You are so dead on with that. And I think we’ll talk about this later in the predictions episode, but Monkey had his giant aha moment and it was exactly using Google’s AI platform. So, uh, I’m with you. I think you’re making, you’re making the right call. Okay. Which of the Magnificent seven Badge loses its position by 2030?
And which company replaces it? Now this is a little funny because how are we gonna know who’s right about this if it’s 2030? So maybe we, we tweak it to 2020, uh, loses its position by 2026. Um, same. Same idea, right?
apple, I reckon, I think they’ve. Like they’ve, they’ve definitely lost momentum with their push around like Apple Vision Pro and augmented reality, and maybe they can pull something outta their ass to save that. I think they’re trying to follow meta, the, the, the path meta are forging with like their raybans.
Um, that seems to be the future of the stuff and maybe they can make themselves relevant, but, uh, there’s a ton of Apple phones out there. But like, I’ve got a load, I’ve got quite a few personal friends who have now converted from Apple to Android, and they all seem pretty happy.
instinctively I wanted to side with you too. Uh, and I’m a long time Apple user. and also then as I got thinking about that, I think that the ecosystem stickiness part is probably despite your anecdote, stronger than, than than ever. And so I’m gonna say, no, Apple’s gonna still tug it out. But the company that I don’t, this is more maybe my prediction out of ignorance.
The company that I really don’t have a good feel for at the moment is meta. even, I mean, they’re taking a lot of shots, but the metaverse has been kind of quiet for a long time. Maybe that’s because they’re slowly progressing or maybe because they’ve hit road bumps. I don’t know. And it’s, by the way, the lowest market cap or one, um, I think of the top seven.
So it has the least to fall. But the, the other half of my answer to me is obvious is that Tesla will be the one to ascend and take their. Um, if there’s any whiff of what we think is coming, if any of that happens in 26, then that’s the flip.
Such a weird, I probably that I, you know, maybe the Mag seven won’t be a thing at the end of the year. Like it was Fang and then Fat Nav or something, and then it was something else. And we’ve been calling it the Mag seven for like a couple of years, but there’d probably be some new name that we refer to, like a different bunch of stocks.
And um, yeah, like you’ll probably see a couple of new names in that collection everyone’s looking at. And I’ve got a decent idea as to who at least one of those will be. That will come to that a bit later. So. Got goes. You are a Tesla fan. I’ve got a Tesla prediction for you here. What’s your opinion on this one?
Will Tesla robo taxis achieve operational coverage of all of Texas by the end of the year?
It’s a funny question because I think, uh, it’s kind of schizophrenic. Texas is the size of practical Europe and most of Texas is a giant wasteland. So in in that sense, no, because there’s just too much to cover and not enough infrastructure. But if I don’t get literal about it, and I kind of take the spirit of the question, uh, I think Austin’s definitely gonna be ro rocking and rolling. Uh, therefore, I imagine Dallas and Houston and San Antonio won’t be too far away. So I kind of wanna hedge my bets and say, in the spirit of, of innovation, Texas will be much further along. At the end of 2026 than most people can imagine.
Yeah, that’s good. I think that’s good. And hopefully like Europe and the UK will be playing like fast follower. I think some of this stuff is happening in some Australian cities. Um, but Texas And if you, I think I’m, I’m just gonna build on your prediction ’cause I agree with you Totally. If, if you take it literally.
Like, I think the answer’s no, like, it doesn’t, commercially it cannot make sense to have like robo taxis going off into the desert or whatever you have like out there. ’cause you know, you’ll have all this, you know, a hundred thousand dollars a CapEx just like spending a day then coming back with no passenger.
Doesn’t make sense. Um, but, uh, and there’s probably, you know, charging infrastructure and cleaning and everything else. I think that would be a like commercial constraint, not a regulatory constraint, not like a technological constraint. There’d be nothing stopping you taking like a roboto taxi from Austin to Houston, for
No.
Yeah, I mean it, look, it’s, we’re still in 2025 and the thing that I didn’t necessarily believe would happen, driverless cars in Austin is al has already happened. So the, the greatest, the greatest crossroads has been crossed. The, the weird thing, I dunno, badge. My, my Tesla performance is from 2021. So I still have the uh, model of, what’s it called, the, uh, version three hardware.
And Tesla in that end has been awful quiet as far as how they’re going to upgrade the computer to the latest software. But even driving on version 12, it’s just shockingly good. So the people who are on 14, uh, they’re saying, yeah, it feels like a human driver. So if that’s been solved, the logistics are gonna fall by the wayside, probably quicker than we expect again, ’cause it’s Texas and Musk home base and there’s just so much money to be.
That’s cool. Are you thinking about, ’cause you’ve got two Teslas, haven’t you? And they’re both like hardware three. You thinking about upgrading
one of those at some point?
yeah, so they both, uh, the, the older one, which was the first, one of the first in Austin that already was upgraded once to version
yeah. But, but I asked actually a mobile repair guy who came a couple weeks ago, like, Hey, do you know anything about, you know, the next upgrade?
And they’re like, no, no words. So, uh, I wonder, yeah, I wonder how much it’s gonna cost them,
Alright. All right. Uh, most valuable company at year end. And let’s just contextualize it. Let’s contextualize it. Like, uh, if you’re not on the YouTubes, like just for context today, which is like the 29th of December, the most valuable company in the world is Nvidia with about $3.4 trillion.
Then Apple with $3 trillion. And if I run down the list, alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, meta, Broadcom, Tesla, TSMC. And in 10th place, Saudi Aramco. At $1.1 trillion. So that’s our
Uh, in incorrect batch, not trillion. Those I believe are pounds. British pounds.
Pounds. You’re right. Sorry. Absolutely. There you go. British person, they’re much higher for dollars. Yeah.
Yeah. Still. So yeah. NVIDIA’s at four something. I think apple’s also in the fours.
Yeah. Right.
I think you and I are seeing eye to eye on this, and this goes back to again, monkey’s recent experience with Google. Uh, this sort of life changing light switch, I think. From the pure, uh, if I wanna say Lynch in perspective, batch.
There’s no company in this moment that I am engaged with more than Google in all of their products. And I went, underwent this major restructuring of my workflows and my browsers and all of the stuff, and I made it all Google. And if I’m doing that, I can’t imagine like, just like how wide this kind of revamp or, or turnover might be on top of obviously everything else that they’ve built.
So, uh, my money, my money is on, on Google Alphabet.
and I’m gonna make a further prediction. I’d, I’d also agree, like incredible risk based return, even though it’s basically doubled from when I said it was gonna double back in May. Like, I still think it’s gonna go on to greater and greater things. and I’ve got an extra like prediction.
I’ll slip in just so you can do the shot at year end. If I, uh, get it right, I think SpaceX is gonna go public, whereas preowned, they’re gonna go public in 2026 and I think they’re gonna come. They’re gonna be in like the top 10 world’s most valuable companies, like by year end.
Interesting. Okay. Bodes well for a ST. So may that, may that be true. Badge. Okay. Um, let’s talk about monies and weird coins and gold, Bitcoin, gold, silver, the dollar uranium. Which one of these, uh. Storage or value or which one of these, I don’t know. CC commodities will be the play of 2026. The only context I want to mention is that I believe silver has gone, has, has over the last week or so, uh, reached all time highs, not seen since the seventies, seemingly overnight because of its connection to solar panels and as a material needed to, uh, for renewable energy or side really didn’t dig deep enough.
But if you look at silver’s chart, it’s kind of going nuts. So, badge. Which of these, uh, me, precious metals or monies do you look back?
I don’t, I kind of dunno. I struggle with this one. I’m going to take a wild stab and say uranium. and for context, uranium today. Is $81 40 cents per pound. That’s like, like, I guess that’s like uranium or I suppose, um, and my kind of vague rationale is, AI data center growth, increasing needs for energy, which, you know, you go on about every week.
Um, and you even have a hat to represent your energy battery headness. Um, and I think like we’re seeing now, uh, legacy nuclear being turned back on, being kept on, like Microsoft just did a deal with Constellation Energy. We’ve also been looking at recently to like restart three Mile Island, I think. and we’ve got like small modular reactors in the background.
We’re not gonna see them operational. Probably in the 2020s, that’s probably 2030 story, but maybe like big tech might start like inverted commas, stockpiling uranium ore in readiness. Like they can’t. Physically store it and enrich it themselves, but they might partner with somebody so like that, you know, they’d be, they’ll be planning ahead for future demand.
So maybe that drives up the price of uranium. What do you got?
Yeah, I like how you’re thinking. Um, uh, not obviously wrong.
Not, I’m not a commodity guy. I’ve got no idea. Yeah.
yeah, yeah. I’m, I’m sorry. I’m going back to the, well, I’m going with Bitcoin, not least because we’re in a, what, 30 ish percent correction, which is, uh, happened simultaneously as all the legislature stuff is about to be made. L law, like all the big boys are now gonna start piling in.
And so it’s a weird thing, you know, when people start getting bearish despite the history, to me that smells that, that’s, that’s yelling opportunity. So, um, nothing about the fundamental Bitcoin thesis has changed. I think the dollar is weakening and I think Bitcoin is just, has so many more interesting qualities to it than any of the precious metals that I, I’m going on the limb and also saying the silver thing is gonna be very short lived and I’m not a commodity trader, but like the pair between going long Bitcoin and short silver is probably going to work out.
I’m curious how that ages.
You’ve, uh, or someone who didn’t age well, so I found this on Reddit for you today just to give you like a bit of a laugh. Uh, so you are predicting silver down Bitcoin up.
Thumbnail of overlay – logo for small bottom left.png
Well, Robert Zaki famous for Rich Dad Poor Dad. That dude who I think has been broadly discredited as being like someone who doesn’t really know what they’re talking about and might have even potentially been responsible for like the real estate crash, the overage in 2008.
So he predicted that your prediction, but he predicted it like 11 months ago. And so, like he got that trade very wrong is, is, uh, he sold his silver, which has now gone parabolic, and he, uh, he bought Bitcoin and that’s done pretty badly. This.
Well, let’s hope Monkey isn’t the next Kiyosaki. I don’t particularly have much fondness for that fella.
I’ve got a macro, macro prediction for here. Then, uh, the 10 year yield, will it exceed 6%? Uh, let’s say at any time in 2006.
Doesn’t seem, doesn’t cut past the muster for me. Badge, government is cutting now. I mean, I don’t know. I can’t sp I mean, I, I get whiffs of the stagflation thing. I don’t quite know how to, maybe that’s why the markets have been so volatile over the last two months because for every bit of good news, there’s some bad news. Uh, the age of productivity is going to, I think, light the fire and the GDP numbers are gonna surprise to the upside, but then maybe employment starts suffering a little bit. I just don’t see. If anything, maybe they pause and they don’t cut as much, but going up greater than six. I don’t see it at all.
Yeah, I think I agree. Um, like rates have come down a little bit and they’re gonna continue to come down. Uh, I, I suppose I’m not a macro guy. I suppose there are for reasons outside of the US’ control, like the 10 year yield could ramp up and if it that happens, like it, it’s not, well, it, it could be doomsday, right?
It could precipitate a lot of bad shit. Like, you know, mortgage rates will go sky high up to, you know, 8% plus if that happened. That’s can be like difficult for householders households are like over leveraged. the government debt is a big problem in the US and that will become a much bigger problem if like the 10 year yield gets up to those kind of levels.
So, you know, there’s a lot of incentives to try and play this smart. I, I dunno, I suppose like the, you know, the replacement of the Fed chair. This could be some, even though it’s like a committee and that one individual doesn’t have all the power, like that could be somewhat influential on where things go in the short term versus the long term.
Maybe this is me being a little too a safe AI centric at the moment badge. But in, if I frame this for myself as a geopolitical arms race, meaning AI verse China, let alone the rest of the world, and this particular. Paradigm shift is enabling basically all these other industries to recalibrate and become even faster, better, stronger, let alone, you know, like military applications and everything. I cannot foresee. And also what we know of Trump, who’s like, give us more ai, faster deregulate everything, I find it hard to believe that with him about to announce a, you know, a new fed chair, that he’s, he’s going to somehow make it harder for capital to flow when capital is so badly needed in this moment. So it would be, if it happens, probably it would be some kind of cataclysmic bad thing broke and then like, yeah, we’re all up Chu Creek.
I, okay, let’s, so let’s, next prediction, let’s, you know, let’s, let’s say that has kind of played out, right? So it’s like the Ray Dalio doomsday. I know the guy’s been predicting Doomsday for like a, you know, most of the latter half of his career. another kind of macro, E dollar, E one does the dollar decline versus true safe havens.
So for the purpose of the prediction, you know, let’s say gold, um, does, does the dollar decline versus gold in like a Dalio style debt and currency squeeze.
I am sorry to be, you know, repeating myself again. Badge, uh, broken record here. But I think 26 might be the year where the Bitcoin dollar, um, start separating in terms of, on one hand, government keeps printing more US dollars. Uh, it so basically weakens it. I don’t think there’s gonna be a massive crash or anything, but it’s certainly, there’s no incentive for it to be stronger. And meanwhile, the Bitcoin machine just becomes the obvious place for, for stores of value and maybe even some of that gold stash. That, that, um, maybe some of that starts from the Bitcoin. So that’s where the, I’m calling the divergence. The BTC US dollar ratio will be in BTCs favor.
Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. I think, I think the dollar is gonna decline as well, but I, I think like. Like, there’s not clear takes on this if people say, oh, you know, the dollar is weak and that’s like a bad thing. It’s not necessarily, it just kind of depends on your situation. Like as a country, a weaker dollar actually is beneficial.
Like it erodes the cost of servicing like the national debt. Um, it makes your exports, uh, cheaper so you can, like, you’re exporting more and then, uh, essentially importing less just ’cause your money buys less. So could be in the US’ interests and, you know, it’s probably an unstated policy, but the dollar decline of the last 12 months or so was, you know, probably to some extent engineered and planned and is now being executed.
I dunno why they would be incentivized to turn that around. So, yeah, I’m, I’m kind of with you. I think that the dollar will decline, but not for bad reasons, for essentially like long-term healthy reasons.
Yeah, though don’t ask Monkey about. About paying for his Sicilian architect in the US dollar, uh, Euro ratio has, has all of a sudden made, made the Sicilian bungalow way more expensive. So poo on that.
All right. Badge. We’ve got a sovereign debt crisis in the G seven in 26. Yay. No.
Uh, probably no. Like it’s a bit vague. What’s crisis? Probably no. Like there’ll be no currency defaults, but I think things are probably gonna worsen, let’s say.
So we’re talking about the us, Japan, Germany, France, uk, Italy, and Canada. And, uh, I’m going with, with AI saves the day for at least another year. Just no way. No way. These, these leaders in that, um, allow some kind of major default. Maybe there’ll be some bailouts or something like behind the scenes. Uh, I’m not particularly secure about regional banks and I think there’s some like overnight repost stuff happening and you know, that’s part of my chain link thesis by the way.
You know, ’cause like, I don’t think banks are particularly well run or transparent or above the line, but that’s probably gonna be small ripples at best.
Yeah. I don’t, I mean, I don’t think AI is gonna save the day in countries like Germany and France and Italy particularly, unless you know something about Italy that I don’t. Uh, but in the US and. The UK and Canada and Japan, maybe, maybe AI could be a big factor in like increasing revenues, cutting costs.
Well see this, this is interesting. This is maybe something most people aren’t talking about. the extent to which the world is AI centric. It’s China and the us and then. Is there an obvious third? Like I should, I should know the answer to that. Um, but regardless, the, it feels to me like there’s going to be an inflection point for pretty much all developed countries where 25 was the building of the infrastructure.
We’ve kind of, we have these bottlenecks, the energy, the data centers, but even despite that, all companies, I imagine in the world now, there’s no company that’s serious that has not already put in massive amounts of work to upgrading to AI agents. And so when I
think of just, just,
is in some of these, sorry, problem in some of these European countries is they’re so busy legislating and like tying their own like hands behind their back. Are they gonna get the benefits of these tools?
I was gonna say that Germany, you know, is known for its manufacturing and for its logistics. So them being a country of engineers and you know, doing things by the book, it seems like they’re gonna be the first to find a way to incorporate the robotics. And so even if that helps some warehouses be, I don’t know, 10%, a little bit faster, a little bit leaner, that’s going to, that’s 10, I don’t know, I’m making numbers up, but 10% faster leaner in the country run by sort of automation.
And you know, that has at its core a lot of these manufacturing processes. I don’t see how that doesn’t either, at minimum stabilize or re-accelerate some GDP growth.
Because again, I’m not an expert on Germany, but they also have some very strict legislation around. Like employee rights. Uh, and it’s very hard for companies to exit employees and they, I don’t, again, I’m not certain on this point, but they might have to, they might be like a company’s financially responsible for that employee for quite a long time after they stop being productive for the company.
So like, unless these companies can solve, like the labor, exiting the labor or, you know, reusing the, the human labor as well as getting the efficiencies, um, like that’s gonna be a challenge. It’s a good, it’s a good challenge. It means they’re looking after their people, but maybe it’s a challenge that the US ignores and then we do end up with like mass unemployment and then like the US ends up in Civil War.
Well, god knows what, right. Um, there’s a problem that us haven’t quite, they’re not facing into, well I say the US like the rest of us, us two.
Okay, we shall see. All right. I’m, I guess I’m a little more optimistic. Um,
yeah. Let’s have a, let’s do a fun, let’s do a fun prediction. I think I got a bit gloomy there. So, um, you’re familiar with Wall Street bets, like the, what, what do they call it? I think they, I think their own tagline is like, uh, like someone gave four chan a Bloomberg terminal. I think that’s like the tagline of Wall Street bets.
It’s like just world craziness. And it’s now like the biggest Reddit, actually, I think I lurk there and a post very occasionally anyway from Wall Street bets is they had a poll recently. What will be the best stock in 2026 and uh, and here on screen now the top 40, just in case you’re not on the YouTubes, I’ll just read out a couple.
So bit self-serving the Reddit wall Streete bets community. Nearly 300 votes said Reddit itself. RDDT would be. Uh, the best stock in 2026, and then a STS Neas, ONDS, Amazon Poet, Oxy Rocket Lab. You can work your way down the list. So some meme stocks and some great companies. Anyway, what’s your pick best owned, worst performer from that Reddit?
This was a tough one. Uh, for, for me, the self-serving or the self-referential Reddit as number one, seemed a little suspicious. Um, but I went with my, uh, my recent darling in the King of the Jungle portfolio, UiPath. I, it’s going to happen to me. It’s inevitable. The only question is whether there’s enough accelerant in the tank for the complexity of what they’re doing to show up in the revenues in 2026.
I think if nothing else, maybe we’ll see it in the last quarter of the year, so I’m willing to wait. Um, so Path UiPath is my, my darling, and the worst, and you can’t, I don’t know, maybe I can’t change my mind. Maybe I’m getting stodgy, but seeing what AI is starting to be capable of, I’m getting suspicious of any AI kind of centered platform, software platform, and that puts Duolingo straight in the cross hairs for me. Uh, both Duo is like a company like Duolingo and Monday, for example. I think we’ve talked about this on a Patreon before. Even if the product is good, even if it’s enjoyable, when people could start making their own stuff. I just don’t see how that doesn’t affect revenues sooner than later. So, uh, duo’s my, my worst performer of 26.
Cool. I like it. I like that you picked that one. I just kind of forgotten about the fact that I used to have a, like a put on Duolingo. I think I had to close it at a loss. I just kind of threw in the towel ’cause the stock was still like running. And I really, you know, I like the, I like the thing I play with the app.
I’ve got, I actually had my, I posted on XA few days ago, 1,111 day streak. But like, I, I, I kind of, you know, and I’m sat on the, on the loo every morning, you know, like. Do a bit of, do a Duolingo minute, and then I’ll go and do a little bit of an exercise on Google Translate. And there’s like a like practice kind of thing in Google Translate.
It’s really good. Can have like an open conversation. Feels much more human. Anyway, I didn’t pick that, but I’m glad you did. Uh, from the
Actually back, you know what, just, just for the sake of completion, and I obviously could be, probably will be very wrong about this. I’m gonna toss Adobe into that same pile. The same, it’s the same feeling. All three give me like solid products, solid, you know, huge valuations. Uh, maybe not. Monday isn’t huge, but like, nothing bad about the company per se, but if people or all these competitors find a way to do it themselves and or better somehow, then the pie just gets eaten up.
So
Just gets, gets like the capability gets commoditized. And then why would you pay a premium from a commodity when you can get the same thing from like. 20 different apps. Yeah, I agree.
Yeah. I mean, even like, I know this is a little tangent, but now I use, what’s it called, uh, Canva for all my digital needs. And it’s just gotten so good and much more intuitive. Yeah. I know it’s not embedded in large institutions, but I’m getting the same like Kodak feeling that the digital camera is already arrived, film is on its way out, but, but.
Um, maybe 26 is the year those kinds of companies explode.
Cool. It made me snicker a little bit like almost all of your, your entire portfolios in this list. Um,
of, uh, there’s a lot of it, isn’t
yes. Right. You should get yourself on Wall Street Batsman. You can become an influencer.
well, let me name it, since you pointed that out, uh, I have several in the top 10 A STS number two on this. At number four poet. I have a call option for 27 on poet at number six. And okay. Those, my and number 13, uh, is Planet Labs,
And you, you got some, you had some PayPal until recently. Uh, Nvidia you had Path is on that list. Uh, open is on that list. Rivian used, spoken up about, pretty sure. You said, well, you definitely own ire, right? And you’re a fan of a MD, so yeah. You know, you’ve got half the list.
Yeah, no, this is, uh, yeah.
Anyway, my best and my worst, which is the, the purpose of this one, but this prediction, I’m also gonna like, shoot from my own quiver best performer, rocket Lab, even from like the 30 something, $37 billion valuation today. Um, it’s a shame I’ve had to, I am, like, I literally just prior to podcast and straight after podcast, I’m in the midst of buying like my investment Christmas presents for all the kids.
So I’m transferring like some money into like my cousin’s kids junior ICER accounts, and I’m buying them, in fact, I’m buying them all Mercado Libre this year. And Mercado Libre is kind of an expensive stock and you can’t do fractional trading. Um, but so it’s like, and I’m, I’m contributing like a chunk of money, but not quite enough to buy a Mercado Libre single share.
It’s like a $2,000 share. So, um, but luckily two years ago I bought all the kids Rocket Lab and that’s like a 12 x in the last two years. So I can, I just sell a little bit of their Rocket Lab and we can buy us some Mercado Libre and we can like, you know, do a bit of diversification. So I’m loving it, I’m loving it.
That’s right. Uh, uncle Badger is very welcome at the Christmas table. Huh.
indeed so, and even from today. I’m having Rocket Lab as the best performer. Maybe a little bit of motivated prediction. ’cause I kind of hope that’s the case for me ’cause it’s my biggest position. But let’s see, for the worst, I, I’m going to, I’m gonna make the obvious play ’cause you kind of called it out.
I think Reddit as the worst performer. I know nothing about, I use Reddit. I’m actually, I was, I’m now in, so I got invited to some club of like, uh, you know, someone who’s had like a Reddit post that had like 25,000 likes. So I’m like, I’m like a super editor. But, um, but uh, I dunno much about the financials of the company.
And I think, like, I don’t really know, I think it’s mostly valued on, it doesn’t really make any money, right? It’s valued on the data, selling that data. Uh, and it, you know, now these days being used as like a source of AI training. Well, like may, maybe synthetic AI training data is gonna kill that to some extent.
And maybe things like Croc and X and other like social sources will just, uh, you know, not crush, but diminished the value of that proprietary data that Reddit has. So anyway, Reddit’s underperform.
makes sense. I just wouldn’t sleep well at night,
Yeah,
like thinking about data as a moat of, of some kind in
2026,
say if I’m, if I’m like inverted reality on any prediction, it’s probably this one and it’s really gonna hurt. ’cause I don’t own Reddit and I own a, a ton of rocket lab,
but there we go.
Okay. Uh, but this, this takes us naturally to most overhyped stocks. For me, uh, uh, this is more of a feeling thing than a probably grounded in reality. But given all the talk about Novo Nordisk and the competition for the weight loss drugs, the GLP ones, and, and talk about how, you know, they’re weirdly affecting all kinds of other biochemical processes.
I have a sneaking suspicion that that’s gonna somehow blow up. And not for the, for the better. Maybe, maybe there’ll be, uh, more trials and maybe more side effects that people were, weren’t counting on. I’m just suspicious of a, like, you know, miracle, miracle drug and the valuations for these things are still massive.
And so I’m taking a cautious, cautious, uh, approach there versus something like. Uh, psychedelics used for depression. We know already from clinical trials that there’s a lot of really, really good data, already promising data in the books. oh, right. So whereas, uh, the market’s really, you know, pounding the drums on the GLP ones, I’m looking at another huge sector, which has to do with mental health, about to roll into a lot of phase three data. And at least in the US I think under Kennedy, he’s quite pro these kinds of, uh, molecules. So,
I’ve, I dunno much about that. I’ve seen some stuff about psychedelics being like more widely accepted and like more con like trials leading to potentially, you know, like place of clinics you can go to and then, you know, have someone like babysit you while you go on like an eight hour trip and then that will solve all of your depression and issues.
So yeah, if that stuff works, then great. Fantastic.
Yes. The the tick row I was fishing for was, mind me, and I confuse myself because I use mind maps all the time. So mind me, mn uh, mn mn. Oh my god, I was just looking at it. Oh. Anyway, whatever the ticker is, look up, mind me and you’ll find it.
I’m almost lost the plot here, but we are talking about most overhype stocks, your anti GLP ones, so like Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly and all those guys. Uh, my most overhype stocks, I think it’d be no surprise, uh, are the quantum shit, cos I’m sorry to Simon Erickson and Chu and anybody else who likes these companies, they, they’re garbage and you won’t be able to convince me otherwise.
Like, this stuff will come to market and like, it will be relevant for certain kinds of processing one day, but it ain’t gonna be these little companies with like, you know. You know, sub, sub like billion dollar r and d budgets, it’s gonna be like IBM or Alphabet or one of these guys. Um, and it’s gonna probably get like the way to get, you know, some true like quantum speed up.
We probably haven’t figured out that technology yet. It’ll be something completely new. But it’s these like, you know, like the Bell Labs from decades ago, like the modern companies like that, the giants that gonna figure this stuff out probably be AI that figures it out. And then we’ll use AI and who’s got the best ais?
Well, it’s like the big guys that ain’t like the little, like nobody
Yeah, that’s proper. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like the, the ones we shorted, uh, quantum Inc. And Qubit,
My shorts are, my, my puts are under water. Yeah.
Yeah. But to your point, I think the bigger point is, you’re right, alphabet has all the capital it could possibly need, plus the world’s most brilliant minds. You think they’re gonna be outcompeted by some proprietary little guide?
No, it’s just not gonna happen. So, I mean, the only hope some of these companies have, I guess, would be to be acquired, uh, if they, whatever they made in the garage is, is good enough to be acquired.
Uh, maybe, you know, maybe what that point, maybe that one of them can pivot back to making coffee again. Like,
right?
yeah.
I mean, you don’t win points for originality here, but I think this is, uh, secure, uh, over hype. Although, uh, maybe quick shout out to Palantir, oddly that that conversation has died down because of the strength of the business. Uh, yet the valuations are still so, so. Overstretched that if, if I were to, to kind of hedge my bed a little bit, I’d say, yeah.
Palantir’s still due for correction.
yeah, maybe I, it is real. It’s certainly real. People get real value out of it, but it’s like, you know, probably it’s kind to say that it’s fully valued, like, you know, 50 years of growth already built into the valuation today. That doesn’t mean they can’t grow for 50 years. Right. And then justify it, so,
The next one is how to position our portfolios in rising geopolitical tensions. Only context I think I’d like to add is when are there ever not rising geopolitical tensions? In fact, as of recently, the big hotspots in the world have seemed like they’re making some progress towards resolutions.
So, I don’t know, 2026 might surprise us to the upside in terms of some peacekeeping outcomes. Uh, but that said, that said badge. Um, given that war and humans go hand in hand, what do you, what do you like?
I like, not like, but you know, I feel like it’s an essential part of the portfolio in a increasingly dangerous world defense and energy I suppose. Uh, like, ’cause you’ve gotta have energy independence and you’ve gotta be able to, you know, protect your way of life. If I had to give like a ticker, or at least like a company for each of these, I do really like Anil and I don’t think it’s gonna be possible to buy it in the private markets.
Uh, and I’m, I feel a bit lucky actually ’cause I follow Palmer, lucky on X, like the founder, CEO of, and in the last couple of weeks, like, he’s quite a loud character. He’s very, he’s fun to follow and he’s like really calling out certain, uh, folk who were trying to like, to purport to be selling, I think I mentioned the previous podcast, but they, they were saying they were, they had like, they were access to annual stock and they were selling on the private markets.
And Lucky was like, no, you don’t like, I’m gonna block any transaction. So maybe I feel lucky that I didn’t get a piece. ’cause maybe I was gonna end up in like a dubious special purpose vehicle that didn’t really own angel stock. But I would like to own that. I’ll probably have to wait until it’s public.
And then Energy, I think I mentioned it a bit earlier on the pod, constellation Energy, um, just, it’s been on my watch list for a little bit. I don’t, I haven’t done too much foundational research on it, but essentially they’re the largest operator of nuclear, like the big legacy, you know, massive nuclear power plants in the US with something like 22 gigawatts of installed capacity out of the country’s total of 33 gigawatts.
So like more than half. And I believe they’ve done a di deal recently with Microsoft to turn back on, uh, the Crane Clean Energy Center, previously known as Three Mile Island Unit One. Um, ’cause Microsoft need that power to power their AI data centers.
Badge. I’m going with Andis. Uh, my, I think number four right now in the, in the King of the Jungle portfolio. This is a new edition after doing lots of dd and what I found just blew me away, back to this word of the year for me orchestration. They are on the outside perceived of as a drone company.
That’s the surface level take really, through mergers and acquisitions, they’ve cobbled together all the needed pieces really to run a, what they call system of systems. So it’s like orchestrating all these moving parts, which do have drones at the center, but they, they’re also upgrading, for example, the US Railroad, railroad network structure.
And so if you think of all the ways that drones as a weapon of attack during war and on the front lines come into play, you also then have to start thinking. Of what happens at large stadium events and at airports, like one rogue drone and bad things happen. And so this is the company that is solving all major defense points in one place.
Not one particular, say robot maker, but if you need this kind of help, that’s who you go to talk to. And then they will help you figure out which particular piece you need. And so to me it’s kind of a little bit of a no brainer, honestly. Um, but you, you won’t get that level of conviction, I think, until you see that the drone hardware piece is not exactly what they’re selling.
It is, but indirectly.
I definitely think you’re onto something with drones like the US has just banned, uh, DJI like the Chinese manufacturer. Drone manufacturer, like this is certainly on the radar for like national defense purposes. Alright, let’s, um, let’s, let’s, let’s do an a, mergers and acquisitions m and a prediction.
So, what will be the biggest or most newsworthy m and a for 2026?
well, batch, uh, originally I came across this question. I thought it was good to ask because I was, uh, following a STS and I came across the possibility of their connection with Amazon and Bezos and that, you know, why wouldn’t Amazon wanna swallow up a STS? And I think that’s actually, it would really depend on the willingness of a ST to sell themselves probably at a lower premium than they will be worth in the future if all things go well.
Uh, but that’s kind of maybe more mythical kind of m and a. Um, I think the real m and a action in 2026 will be in the biotech sector. Because the valuations are so stinking low after four years of, of, uh, basically nothing. And we already see this unfolding, uh, end of 25 cheap companies being swooped up.
And so I’m going for, um, I’m kind of gonna go with with two one, my baby relay therapeutics, I think could be swooped up, especially if their cash position gets a little dicey and management decides to say, okay, screw it. We’re gonna go the safe route route. And also I’ll say probiotics, the robot, um, the prostate cancer, uh, robotics company we talked about when we talked about to the robotic surgeon.
I think that gets acquired sometime in 26.
Cool. Nice one. Uh, our, uh, our guest from that episode, professor Ps who had lunch with subsequent to recording, and he’s like one of the world’s foremost robotic surgeons, was a big fan of probiotics and if he’s listening, I think he may even have now bought it for his own portfolio. I think he was thinking about getting started.
my m and a Pang be a bit boring here. Like a, like I know I’ve got one in my own portfolio, CyberArk, which is about to be acquired by Palo Alto Networks, which I also own. Um, that’s kind of old news. There is gonna be more consolidation in cybersecurity. There’s still hundreds of companies out there who have interesting capabilities, but they’re gonna get gobbled up by like the few winners, but that’s not really like national headline stuff and can be a bit boring and stick to my last year predict.
’cause you gave it a shout out in episode one 12 and I, I think we weren’t that drunk. Like we were still making sense at that point in the conversation. So I’m gonna say Lyft, uh, the, like the Uber competitor in North America, I’m gonna say they get acquired by one of the operators, let’s say like Google or Tesla.
That makes sense. But yeah, that, that makes sense. Good. Cool.
Alright.
Badge. Moving on.
Yeah. Let’s make it personal. Let’s make it personal. Yeah.
Which portfolio Holding will give us the largest gains in 26.
I actually think it’s probably gonna be one of yours. ’cause you own, like, just objectively the mar, the average market cap of your portfolio is much, much lower than my own or than the community portfolio. So if I look across those like three buckets, like I kind of for you, I hope it’s eos right? Um, it’s done incredibly well for you.
I know it’s had a bit of a like descent in the last few months and I’m glad you, I think you told us a few episodes ago you had diversified a bit out of eos, so that might have protected, like locked in some of your gains hopefully. But um, yeah, based on, based on market cap, probably eos, um, even though I like Rocket Lab and my own portfolio, I suppose maybe just to get a word in for my own portfolio.
I think if you want like my best like risk-based return option today, probably not gonna be like a 10 bagger, well it certainly won’t be a 10 bagger, but risk-based return it’s probably MercadoLibre, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll go with Theios on voting Team monkey.
Okay. Yeah. You know, ans I don’t think that’s a bad call. Whether you’re right, I think will depend on how willing the market is going to pull forward 27 earnings. Because in 26 what we’re gonna see. Is the factory expansion and the proof that there’s both the demand and that they have the scaling is just a matter of cut and pasting.
And then once that’s in hand, then it’s copy and paste times four, eight, whatever. And the market being one year out in general might really, what if all things are not blowing up? You know? And if things are going well, then the forward, uh, multiple might get quite extended and that would make it the winner.
Cool. I mean, I would just say like I I go, sorry. Just to contextualize it, like I do not own any EEO apart from the option you made me buy when I lost a bet and I don’t have any plans to buy it. I’m just kind of saying it as a vote for Team Monkey and. Like mostly justified by it being one of the smallest market caps, and so therefore, certainly more opportunity to multibagger.
And I do trust you, you, you’ve proven that you do actually know what you’re talking about.
it took us three years of, of doing our, our show together. Oh my goodness. That’s great. same mindset badge. But, uh, it was easy for me to overlook when thinking about this. I’m going with coherence old, my old how coherence, because it’s at a hundred million something market cap. And this is the year where the data’s really going to, uh, fingers crossed, come in.
That basically demonstrates that couple of the assets they hold are the leading edge next cancer molecules that will be needed. And so to be bought out, even for something as poultry as 1 billion, that’s a 10 x right there. And so things took a little longer than expected, but 26 is the year that I think coherence finally makes good, uh, with a whopping return.
I’m pushing my uh, January 20, 26 option. Looks like it’s like not looking very pretty
No, you don’t wanna know how many of those I have.
Yeah. Yeah.
You don’t wanna know.
God. Alright, well, let’s, uh, we did like the, the highest gain, so let’s go to the other end, which across all of the community portfolio and our portfolios, which holding gets sold due to a broken thesis.
All right. I guess I’ll go first. And this is sadly in, uh, one of the positions in Monkey’s Portfolio. Uh, so Luna Holdings in, uh, our Patreons know that I have a collection of four, call it a AI data center plays two are the top dogs, iron and cipher. But I also decided to add two that are, uh, I would call severe underdogs with tiny market caps, DG XX Digi power.
And so Luna, and so Luna are the ones that are sort of the renewable energy experts. They’re trying to take advantage of Texas’s. Renewables to make the energy cheaper. And so I think they’re at 150 million market cap, some, something like that. Why they might go bust is because it’s one thing to, you know, be in the right sector, but the financing is proving to be way more complicated, uh, given the potential issues with the debt and the, and yeah, basically the margins on how, it’s not enough, I guess, to have the product, but if you’re such tiny market cap with dilution hanging over your head, it’s quite a risky play.
So if something’s gonna blow up in monkey’s portfolio, I think that it might be sauna.
and kind of for the same reasons like that I did for the best performer, I think the worst performer’s probably gonna be in your portfolio too, for kind of the same reasons, like you own, you have a, you know, predominantly highly volatile, quite speculative portfolio, but then you only need one or two to win for that strategy to make sense.
And you have proven it made sense ’cause you did like a 360% return last year. like if I had to call out anything in my portfolio, it could be Novo nor disk. Like they could just screw up execution again. But I’m gonna go with one of yours. Is it, am I cheating? ’cause it broken thesis, like there is no fricking thesis genius group.
That like genius group, the Bitcoin ed tech learning, going to have Caribbean islands and start Bitcoin schools. What the f.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. Okay. Hold on, hold on. Let me push back a little bit. It depends ’cause we have two thesis here. I think you’re right that based on what you just said, right? Just the future of tech and, uh, although, although, yes, it sounds shady, but the more, actually, I think from coming from the educational perspective, no, seriously hear me out.
Badge. The old education model is dying. And so whatever these guys are doing, maybe it’s like a trick and horse and pony show, but at least they’re trying to say, look, we’re gonna start educating people with being AI centric and like, we’re gonna have these conferences and people are gonna have the network effect thing.
So it’s like a blend of hospitality slash at least do education differently. Who knows? I don’t think it’s as, as. Stupid as it might look like on the surface, but that’s not even, I’m willing to give that to you. That’s like a silly thesis to invest the company in. My thesis really is that they have all these law lawsuits that could basically prove they’ve been illegal market manipulation, and all these lawsuits are now in advance stages in whatever payout they might get.
If, if there’s any justice at all in this world, which there might not be, uh, then this, this company is going to, you know, skyrocket. But,
um, so the thesis is the law will, the law will do what the law is supposed to do,
and if that breaks, then too bad on many, on many levels.
go then. Well, tell us, tell us about another one of your holdings, um, which hasn’t done too well in the last few months. So, Chainlink will the chainlink interoperability protocol, CCIP settle a live tier one bank transaction, and you might have to explain what actually means before you give your answer.
Sure. So, uh, let’s start from the tokenization angle. We know for sure all the big boys are saying we want to tokenize, meaning bring onto blockchain technology, all kinds of equity and assets. We wanna make those represented as tokens that can easily then be traded and swapped using blockchains. CCIP is the, call it meta layer invented and sold by Chainlink that connects.
All the different blockchain companies and chains together, literally Chain Link. And they’re also the company that is basically providing, yet again the, the word of Monkeys 2026, the orchestration layer that includes privacy and security and compute and development features all in one. And so the question here is, will one of the big banks actually perform a, a big settlement live with real money using chain link’s technology?
And my answer badge is a very hesitant yes because everything depends on the last piece of legal le legislature to be passed because that’s where everybody’s waiting on. You banks won’t even begin doing any of this stuff until it’s actually, you know, it, the stakes are way too high. And the last whispers have been that the bill is actually written in the house or one of the chambers as of now, and that it’s not outside of, uh, the realm of possibility that this bill will pass all of the legal hurdles within something like three to four months.
If that happens, if we have now regulatory infrastructure in place and call it the first half of 26, then it’s remains, I think, reasonable to think that the back half something will finally say, okay, we got, we have everything we need, and we’ll do a pilot or something for whatever, minimal amount and that it will happen.
All right. Yeah. Okay. I suppose I’m, I’m gonna kind of say the same thing, like, I think like, probably it’s being done already, but, um, there, there will be like proof of concept type stuff, but these are the banks we’re talking about and they’re like slow and scared of adopting new technology, if that introduces any kind of, you know, reputational operational financial risk.
So I don’t think we’re gonna see any kind of material volumes. Transacted, um, across like, you know, from like a regular transaction using cross chain interoperability protocol to actually then like, move money or do some kind of operation. So kind of, yeah, but only in like a toy box kind of thing.
Okay. Alright. Let’s see.
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. should we talk about another one of our companies, um, A STS. So this is controversial one will the prediction. The question on the prediction is, will a STS facilitate a commercial telephone call before starlink Direct to sell?
Okay, badge. I’m gonna answer this in this in maybe, uh, not fun way, but to me, it’ll get to the heart of this question. I am fully confident that a ST has the far superior technology. That’s, there’s no doubt about that, but whether there’s gonna be some hanky panky, fudging or changing of terms and some demos that both companies could claim do the job and which one would be first.
To that end, I think it’s a toing cost, but in the end, all of that will be in material in 2026. A ST will be. Obviously, if there’s some legitimate chance of a company truly allowing normal people to have access to digital space Band, a ST will be first in the In the wholesome way.
Okay.
Yeah, because, because starlink is just too far behind.
It’ll take years.
I’m definitively the other way on this, but I own, I just for clarity, again, I own more a STS than I own SpaceX, probably by a factor of two or three. but, um, definitively no, because like, the, the essence of this prediction is a commercial course, so not as you said, not like a, you know, a demo, like they’re actually selling a service.
So my understanding is, well, so A STS have five block one satellites up there now operating, and that they’re smaller and hopefully they’ve now got one block two satellite, which is yet to unfold, but could be like in the next few weeks. But these things are like whizzing around the earth or like an orbit.
And if you wanna provide. Like a, a telephone call, you have to have like a satellite overhead for the duration of the phone call. Otherwise you, you know, you’d only have like, you know, one satellite probably gives you like a, I dunno, like a 10 minute window every two hours. I dunno how often these things go on the earth.
So I think from a little bit of very quick research this morning, A STS is forecasted to need 45 to 60 operational block two satellites so they can have like continuous 24 7 coverage in the continental us. So that’s like years out, right? 45, 45 block two satellites. There’s certainly not in 2026, so before you, before you attack that.
Whereas SpaceX, starlink, they’ve got 650 satellites up there now, which are direct to cell enabled and I’m sure I agree. Like they’re probably inferior technology, but there’s 650 of them. So, uh, and they work with now today with like. 60 different commercial handsets. So they have direct to sell, but just really low bandwidth.
It’s like text messaging. So if they can just fix, you know, if they can increase the bandwidth, it might be a shitty phone call. You know, you probably, maybe, maybe to start with it’s like what? Well I think you can WhatsApp in certain locations now using on T-Mobile and then there’s, you know, they have to upgrade the fleet, which they will be doing.
’cause hopefully they’re gonna have Starship and they’ll start putting like the next gen star, uh, star links up into, up in the sky. Like they can just get this stuff into orbit faster. So I think there will be commercial first. That’s my prediction.
Okay, so, uh, I think we could spend the whole episode on this, but from my end, I think there’s a couple of, uh, uh, linguistic fallacies here.
Let me unpack, to your point, 650 is a larger number than what a ST has, but more is not better. They’re smaller and they’re just way less capable. I could argue that, that, you know, spending out, sending out a lot of space debris is not, not great.
But the second point though is like, what do you mean by, you know, working or commercial, uh, you know, define your terms. And in this case, I’m legitimately thinking of this question as when could a normal user with, with whatever phone they have, do what they do on their phone, normally watch YouTube and text and call and, you know, as though their signal was not at all different from what we have on the terrestrial plane.
And from that end, starlink is not going to be able to do that, uh, faster than a ST. And so commercial, that’s why I’m saying commercial is a weird, you know, depends what you mean by is, is, you know, did you have sex with that woman?
We,
You know.
you live in the US so No, it’s. You pay your telecommunications provider, like at what point does, does either of them offer a service that you would be willing to pay like 10 or 20 bucks a month for? ’cause you get actual value out of it? I think starlink will get there first if you are like a
Okay. Right. So that’s what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s what I mean, like you we’re defining our terms here differently and that’s why I think this is a messy question. I don’t disagree. I think for the time being Starling stuff is good enough, therefore people will pay. But once a ST is out and it’s a whole nother level,
then okay, moving on.
Yeah.
Uh, badge. This is, uh, kind of, uh, up your alley. Will Rocket Labs, neutron Rocket get to orbit in 26?
Yes, but probably not on the first attempt, which is why I’ve been trimming my lab.
And I’m saying yes because it seems like they’re overdue. Uh, they’ve already been delayed for quite a bit, so I don’t see why it would take longer than 2026, especially with the space economy as heated heat heating up as it is. So that’s just a simple, optimistic bed on Rocket Lab,
uh, in a totally different category.
This is, this is getting fun. Uh, fortune 500 CEOs on earnings calls, on earning calls badge. Will they start to integrate prediction market odds in what they talk about?
I think well like definitively, yes. ’cause it’s already happened, but it’s kind of as a joke. Brian Armstrong, the Coinbase, CEO, I think there were like bets on. Or one of the poly market as to words he would say. And at the end of the call, he just literally went, he looked at it, he just read all the words, saw the bets, like cashed in for a bit of a joke.
Um, but like I, I kind of don’t mind the CEO citing prediction market odds. I do not like the CFO citing prediction market odds.
That’s funny. Yeah, that’s good. You know, I’m gonna take the, maybe the holistic view on this is that I sincerely think prediction markets are the more accurate way to, to get information that’s been proven. So we know this in politics. We, we actually, I mean, I don’t think there’s any debate about that.
It’s being. Call it ized or, you know, there’s a degenerate aspect to it, but in the more purely I need information and I need it to be as solid as I could get it. This tool is gonna be big, and it’d be, it’d be weird if major companies don’t take advantage of it. So I’m, I’m definitely yes. In this
Yeah. Like Yeah, it is, it is interesting ’cause like you’re right, they do like the wisdom of crowds. They do encapsulate a lot of that stuff. Um, whether it’s. You know, is a, it’s a bit odd to be excited specifically as a data point on earnings calls. ’cause what’s the, you know, it’d be like, it’s sort of like someone saying, oh, you know, like wall streete bets likes our company.
I suppose some CFOs, CCF CEOs might say that, but probably not the credible ones. But at some
point.
the, I mean, well, I, I mean the one difference though, and it’s not small, is that prediction markets have money behind them. So. It’s more than wisdom of the crowds, right? It’s also like a filtering mechanism that says each data point here has value that you can’t get in something like a Reddit form.
Well here’s a, like, it’s a twist on the prediction, and it’s not 2026, but like maybe one day companies will have like their prediction market bets on the balance sheet. Like sort of, it’s kind of a form of hedging or debt, you know.
I mean, it’s uh, it’s, you know, investing in 2026 is already kind of interesting. Some companies are allowing questions from retail
that they then include on the earnings call. So there’s already a portal into that world. You know, like the walls, I’m talking about this a lot and you’ll hear this a lot from our Wall Street Wildlife podcast and Patreon in 26.
This feeling that investing has undergone a major paradigm shift. Where everybody, if they find the right tools, can now work at a way higher level than ever before. And so I think that kind of demo democratization of access and retail and institutions and the analysts and you throw in the AI and the swimming pool is getting a little bit more similar than ever.
And so I’m, I’m a, I I think, yeah, prediction stuff is going to the, the companies using retail’s voices is going to only accelerate somehow.
yeah. That’s cool. I definitely buy that. Alright, let’s, um, let’s go rapid fire a little bit. So, uh, will. Ace, any state or states prioritize homes over data centers in terms of like energy availability?
Yeah, so that this is a question. Uh, data centers need all the power, but power demands increased electricity costs. People are gonna be out there with their pitchforks saying, dammit, not in my backyard. I’m saying no. Despite that, I think the, the data center train just doesn’t stop and everybody knows it, and everyone’s just gonna have to suck it up.
I kind of feel like probably yes, but it will be like a political stunt. It won’t be meaningful, but I think, I think come like the time when we’re about to take a shot, I think I’ll be able to find a news article that shows at least like one state governor saying that they did this, but whether it was real or not, I dunno.
All right. Badge. Tell me this, uh, will, will, we have our first, uh, sort of biological premium paid that establishes a kind of, this thing you’re looking at is verified to be human tier, and you’ll have to pay more to access the old flesh and bone made by a meat suit tier as opposed to.
Yeah, I, I like this prediction, I think. Yes, definitely. And possibly like you, maybe it would be mandated, it might be like, probably the other way around. It would be mandated that you have to say like, AI had a hand in creating this thing versus something that’s like, you know, maybe nothing will be purely human eventually, but, you know, there’ll be some like, you know, legal definition.
So, yeah, I think we, uh, we will have a verified human here.
Yeah, vinyl. Vinyl came back, so maybe humans will come back.
I caught, uh, did I say this on a recent pod? I caught a prediction on another podcast recently about the virtual Turing test. Um, and I think the guy predicted that in 2026 you were, you potentially will have like virtual, uh, colleagues, like lawyers and marketing people, and you’ll inter operate with them over zoom, just like chatting to them on Zoom and you won’t be able to distinguish like Theis from the real humans.
And he’s off with the timeline. But actually I think that’s probably a legit prediction.
Badge. Tell me this. A tokenized real estate title, like a hundred million dollars real Estate on chain deal. Does this happen?
Nah. Gimmick. It may be, but it will be a gimmick. It won’t be, there will be, I will say definitively, there will be no official like proof of title proof by exclusively by something on a blockchain rather than, you know, title like property will be defined by whatever legacy institution. The company, the country has the land
registry in the uk.
and I’m going to ask me again in 27, so no, for 26, as badly as I want this to happen, the real estate industry is just the last story, the frontier of, of tangled webs, and it’s just too soon, but 27. Hmm.
I’ve got a fun one for you here. Uh, sort of leaning back into like the verified humans, will there be a lawsuit, uh, holding accountable an AI agent like crime by ai?
Absolutely, and I’m thinking, and this is bad, this is scary. The phishing scams that we’re gonna start seeing, I had to help my parents just a few days ago, avoid one. They’re going to, they’re gonna get really, really sophisticated and at one point it’s gonna lead to disaster. And, uh, it might be some teenagers, you know, a AI agent in their garage that went out and did bad things.
And they’re going to, it’s gonna be bad. There’s gonna be prison terms and, and as there ought to be, right? But, but unfortunately, there’s gonna be a lot of victims first.
Yeah, it’s, it’s a weird one, isn’t it? ’cause I, I totally agree with you, but like, who do you hold accountable? Like certainly these tools are gonna be like, this is today the new tool set of hackers and scanners, but they’re using them. Um, like romance scams and things like that. But like who do you blame?
Like the bad guys will always use like the bad guy tools. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m gonna come a bit more like above board, but say also agree with you. There will be a lawsuit, but mine will be a bit more, like a proper lawsuit in a court. So I think like we, we, we have had a number of robo Taxii deaths and I, I dunno the stats, ’cause I think they’re probably covered up by, you know, Waymo and Tesla and these companies, Uber and the victims get paid off for the victims’.
Families get paid off if it’s a fatality, like it’s inevitable. I’m not saying it’s a, I’m not saying, oh, you know, stop all autonomous vehicles. It’s inevitable and it’s better ’cause less people will die overall. But unfortunately people will die. ’cause that’s just the nature of like, cars that weigh, you know, tons and on the streets.
Um, so I think we will see a civil case. Probably not a criminal case, but a civil case brought against one of the operators in 2026, accusing them of like lack standards. And maybe it would turn to class action. I don’t know. Um, but we’ll probably see something like that.
All right. Badge enough bad news.
Or, Hey, before, before we move on, I’ve got a fun little one. Probably only if you’re on the YouTubes, check out this little video for AI crime,
It’s a guy in a, if you’re not on the YouTubes, it’s a guy in a motion capture suit, like doing some like kung fu while they’re recording for some movie or something, video game.
And he accidentally kicks like he has the robot kick him in the nuts and he like collapses. But the most comical thing is like the robot collapses at the same time, like clutching its own coin ’cause it’s kind of kicked itself in the nuts. It’s pretty cool.
All right, let’s get to the real Now we’re, we’re, we’re near the end and let’s get to the most important predictions of 26. Does Badger finally come to his senses and divorce his. His reputation and his health from away from Greg’s sausage rolls. Does he finally come clean and just does the right thing or, or not?
Monkey’s take is that he does. He finally, he finally realizes just what it is that he’s done. He wakes up sometime in January and says, I cannot, I cannot abide this, this egregiousness any longer. And he’s out and his portfolio starts to shine.
I wish that there was a Greg’s branch in Las Vegas. I’ve just checked again. There is no official Greg’s bakery in Las Vegas. Uh, so I won’t be to bring you a Greg’s sausage roll when we meet for our Patreon meetup in March. Uh, I will still be a Greg’s shareholder, I expect at the end of this year. I don’t eat the Greg’s stuff though, like that’s just like heart attack food.
But, um, I will still be a shareholder. I like my dividend gains.
If Right. Let all the others have their heart attacks. I’m just gonna collect the dividends. Oh, badge. Okay. Maybe the most important question of, of this, uh, prediction episode is what will be the most improbable Las Vegas Wall Street Wildlife Number one meetup outcome.
I am gonna, even though you performed very well in the episode one 12 very drunk poker quiz. Uh. I’m gonna say the most improbable thing is that you win the poker tournament. We have with our Patreons who join us.
And I’m going to say that despite, despite the protests our, our Patreon, Barry will in fact be willing to sacrifice his marriage to make it to the meetup.
I know that guy’s got an Italian wife. You know how fiery they can be.
Barry, Don’t let monkey, don’t let your pound monkey down on this one.
what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. We won’t, definitely won’t release it as a Patreon exclusive bonus episode. should we, should we sort of close it out with one one like portfolio E one? So it is an interesting one. This made me scratch my head a bit. Uh, will hour end. King of the jungle portfolio beat our individual like, like for me it’s my retirement portfolio. Um, and I think, I think with, I’m optimistic we’re gonna have a good year in 2026 with all the AI inness and everything else and just declining interest rates.
I think growth stocks are still gonna continue their ascent. Even though it might be unsustainable, it’s gonna be even more unsustainable. So I think my King of the Jungle portfolio is gonna outperform my retirement portfolio and I accept that it’s by design. ’cause I’m trying to be a bit safer in the retirement portfolio.
and I’m wishing our Wall Street Wildlife portfolio, all the successes, All the successes I’m wishing your portfolio badge, uh, uh, Hardy comeback in 2026.
Could you come back? I did nine. I did 93% return. Come back mother.
badgers, badgers comeback tour from a measly whatever. Um, but monkey’s going on a record here, folks, and saying that despite having egg on his face, uh, via his chain link investment 2026 will be the year of chain link. And that alone being monkey’s, one of the top, one of his top holdings will propel monkeys portfolios to all time greats smoking, all competitors throwing rotten banana peels behind him as he zooms way out ahead of everyone.
Awesome. Okay, good. Good luck with that.
And, uh, bonus question, bonus prediction. Will Badger read more than two books in 2026? This is, this is the easiest hanging fruit out of this whole question set. No, no. Badger will not read more than two books in all of 2026.
Like, if you’re allowing me, you know, like Jack and Jill went to the market kind of books, then yeah, no problem. I, I’ve read two books this month. I’m gonna read two more books in January just to spite you.
All right. All right. Beasties, you heard to hear first. I can’t wait to see how poorly these age.
I like it. These are good. Like we had a ton, we went through a ton. like we talked about a whole ton of predictions. Um. I think we’ve made some, we’ve probably got definitely some stinkers in there, but I think we’ve made some good predictions in there.
And there was a ton of, hopefully a ton of alpha you’re gonna get either by, well, I guess either by like following our prediction or inverting it. So, um, uh, and it’d be fun to come back to these, like, I will publish these as standalone YouTube, like media, like 10 miners, and, uh, we’ll see which one, uh, we’ll get people to vote on it on YouTube, see, which, we’ll see how many people will like, thumbs up or thumbs down for each of these, uh, predictions.
Did you have a favorite prediction in there at all?
Favorite. Um, you know what, sorry, I’m gonna take this a different direction just to close out the conversation. It’s a question we prepped for, but didn’t quite make it into the script. I was thinking about bottle, this idea of bottlenecks and that 2025, you know, we, what did we hear more than anything else is that powers the new bottleneck for ai and that it’s not GPUs and compute, hence the rise of all these data centers.
But there was an obvious, right, there’s an obvious, yeah. Bottleneck, um, choke point where if you could solve that, everything else follows from it. I’m starting to get a feeling deep down badge that, because 26 will be the year in which basically AI gets into the hands of more and more people. I don’t know if the mass is exactly, but just it continues, its spread that the new bottleneck will be that old school capacity for humans to genuinely stay curious and.
Imaginative and not outsource everything to the, to the robots. And that we’re going to feel a pinch and it’s gonna be tied to some of these other predictions that, um, that amidst this sort of like narrowing of what people do, too much will be outsourced and mistakes will be made and AI deaths will happen.
And, but something bad bish around what it means to be human. Or maybe not bad ish, let me rephrase that. There’s gonna be an existential crisis that’s probably gonna happen sooner than later and people will need to really figure out for themselves that it’s not all about predictions and models. There’s the living left to be done.
There’s the messiness of living to be done. And that curiosity is gonna need to put up a fight. Try to put up a fight.
Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. You’re right. Like we talked a, a week or two ago that we are thinking about like creating some tools for our Patreons around how to use AI productively and like you should lean into these tools like they’re an accelerator, I guess. So much done using this stuff every day. I’ve got, at any point, I’ve got like 20 open conversations with Gemini, which I dip into every day, just to like explore topics more.
But like, don’t, don’t step across the line into letting the AI form your opinions. It can inform your opinions, but like, don’t outsource your opinion to these tools. ’cause suddenly, you know, you’re like the flesh bot just like copy and pasting and you know, what, what useful purpose are you serving?
Alright, batch. Let’s see what happens. But we have, uh, as a little preview, we do have some. Fun projects in the works for our Wall Street Wildlife Community. Monkey and Badger have been working on some things behind the scenes, so we look forward to to parading those around when they’re good and ready in a couple of weeks, months,
I think we can also, we can say, uh, Vegas is now like fully locked in. We not only have flights booked, both of us like Christophe’s books and flights, we are definitively there. Uh, we got ourselves a penthouse suite at the v at the area, pretty swish venue. And we’ll be hosting a wall, wall Street Wildlife, Patreon, meetup kind of party in the suite.
We’ll be doing some due diligence together. We’ll be drinking together. We’ll be definitely playing poker together. We might try and see a show. We’re gonna kind of figure it out. So if you’re interested in joining us, uh, for that. And the date is, are we saying
it’s
let’s call it for now.
Yeah, the weekend, the weekend of March, uh, Friday, the 27th and 28th. Those are the dates you wanna have circled on your calendar. Barry, get your flights now before tickets. Ticket prices go up.
Very good. We, we didn’t really mention them today, but I do wanna give a shout out to one of our, uh, most important partners, fiscal ai, like the essential stock research platform that Christoph and I use every day. Uh, it’s my one stop shop for research, like tons, 20 years plus of financial data that I really like their company specific segment data.
Things like Duolingo, daily active users, and you know, Tesla revenues by country. You can’t get this from the other platforms. Earnings call transcripts, ownership data, research reports. It’s pretty complete. If you use our link fiscal.ai/wildlife, you’ll get two, three weeks of fiscal pro with no credit card needed and you’ll get a 15% discount if you upgrade.
That’s fiscal do AI slash wildlife.
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