Top stock picks for 2026 from Wall Street insiders

Well, strategists project another bullish year for U.S. markets. Investors should also be looking beyond domestic equities so as not to miss out on the opportunities lying within the international arena. Portfolio manager of the Parnassus International Equity Fund, Ken Ryan, joins us now to discuss. Ken, it is good to see you. So, you know, it's a new year, Ken. Maybe I'm looking over my portfolio. Why do I want exposure to international markets, Ken, in 2026 and beyond? What are the big picture reasons? Yeah, well, thanks, Josh, and really, really glad to be here. I'll start with the big reason, which international markets were up 30% last year, over 30%. Let that sink in for a minute. Notably outperforming the S&P and what were really the key drivers of that, very important to understand. It's a variety of themes throughout a number of regions and markets, largely uncorrelated to the U.S. It's the U.S. dollar weakening and that helping a lot of global companies. And it's starting valuations in general and internationally being a lot lower than the U.S. And for U.S.-centric investors, who oftentimes tend to focus on their home market, tend to focus on the MAG-7, tend to ignore some of these opportunities globally, we think this is a very good opportunity. Start of the year, everyone revisits their portfolios. And we really, we have a lot of themes we're excited about, and we really want to make a lot of investors a lot more aware of what's going on in the rest of the world. What are some of the wild cards, though, Ken, I might need to consider before deploying capital overseas? I mean, would it be, you know, is it geopolitical tensions, Ken? Is it tariffs? Is it rates? Walk me through the broad risks you would see. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think, Joss, this is a very important reason to look to an active equity manager and look to a professional manager to watch all the trends. I mean, if I look at the index that we track, there's well over 25 different countries around the world. To your point, there's many geopolitical tensions going on. There's interactions with the U.S. in a variety of regards. However, there's also a fair number of opportunities. And we tend to look at the opportunities. We tend to focus on the opportunities. We balance those with the risks. And if you look at Europe, for example, this is a region that we're just so excited about the infrastructure. And the infrastructure build not only over the next year, but over the next decade. This is energy transition, rising electricity demand. This is Europe, broadly led by Germany, planning to spend over a trillion euros over the next decade building out infrastructure. And there's not only a number of sectors, utilities, industrials, materials, but also a lot of specific companies that get us really excited about the region. On sticking with Europe, Ken, this was interesting. You point out European banks have outperformed, actually, the Mag 7 over the last few years. What explains that, Ken? Is that sustainable? And what's a smart way to play that, in your opinion? Yeah, absolutely. You took my stat, Joss. So I appreciate you highlighting that one. So I think the story largely with European banks is you almost had a lost decade from 2010, 2009, all the way through really to 2022. Rates were near zero for most of that period of time. Regulation was incredibly high on these banks. And they took a lot of hits in the global financial crisis. You've seen now three full years going into year four of a lot of that reversing. And these banks starting to benefit from a lot of that pain. They took over a 10-plus year period. Rates have gone up. These banks are being run lean and efficiently. And they're being very diligent with their capital, very friendly to shareholders. So what you're seeing return on equity is a measure we follow very closely for a lot of the banks. You've seen a lot of these banks over the past three, four years move from mid-single-digit, maybe high-single-digit rate on returns on equity to mid-teens for most of them now. And even trending into the high teens. We're really focused on quality here at Parnassus. And look, if someone told me you have a mid-teens, even high-teens return on equity company trading at a low double-digit PE, close to one times price to book, those are usually the kind of companies we want to look at and potentially own. And there's a lot of banks that meet that criteria. Ken, let me end here on another thing you point out. Japan, you say at a possible turning point. How so, Ken? Walk me through it. And then how do I want to play that? You know, is it a smart way, country-specific ETF, Ken? Or no, there are certain specific stocks on your radar. Yeah, great question. So first and foremost, Japan has been undergoing corporate governance reform. They're now probably in year four or five. But to continue on my previous point of return on equity, most companies you met with in Japan five, six, seven years ago, return on equity was not something they actively talked about. It wasn't something they were putting in their presentations. And you contrast with that today. It's in every discussion. It's in every medium-term plan. It's in every target. And the point behind this is Japanese companies with corporate governance reform, they're focused on returns on capital. They're focused on their shareholder base. And they're focused on running efficient operations and really focusing on their core businesses. And in terms of how to play it, you know, we're bottoms-up stock pickers here. We're big believers that you have to look at the specific companies. You have a lot of management teams in Japan that are saying all the right things to investors, but they're not really following that up with action. And what really we're looking for is not only a management team who says they're focused on return on equity, who says they're focused on their core business, who says they're focused on unwinding cross-share holdings, but the companies that are actually doing that and showing a lot of evidence. So those are the types of ones we have in our portfolio. Final one, Ken, I just want to sneak a final name in here. Siemens Energy, I know, is a name you like. Why is that a buy? Yeah, I think the simple answer is Siemens Energy. You have a highly moated, competitively advantaged business. You have demand as far as the eye can see. Their main business, they're completely sold out of capacity through 2030 and beyond. And you have a structural winner with margin expansion opportunity as this demand comes through. So look, Josh, we're long-term investors, three- to four-year average holding period. Some we hold longer than that. Siemens Energy seems like one we can hold for multiple years as the company continues to execute, continues to benefit from increasingly relevant product, and really has a margin benefit as that happens. Ken, appreciate your time in those picks. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. See you later. Maybe just start right there, Peter. For 2026, you talk about selective opportunity for investors. Walk us through that. How do we discern winners from losers, Peter, against this backdrop? What am I screening for as an investor? Yeah, absolutely. So thanks for having me on. Stiefel's out with our 2026 preview on lifestyle brands. After a challenging 2025, we're here to turn the page into 2026. And we see valuations at historical lows. And this gives us opportunity to be selective. We see opportunity for those of structurally improving businesses, underappreciated growth models, and those where battered businesses that have opportunity for sentiment re-rating. You do also, Peter, you do highlight a theme we talk a lot about on the show, a K-shaped consumer. How does that impact, Peter, where you see opportunity this year? Yeah, absolutely. The higher income households have been driving spending. We expect that dynamic to persist. So we see the opportunity for brands who are bringing performance innovation to scale to the consumer. Those are likely to be advantaged. And the consumer is yet to push back on pricing where they see sufficient value. What do you think, Peter, margins are going to look like for your coverage universe this year with tariffs still in play here? Yeah, look, so 2025 tariffs were announced. We're going to get our first full year of tariff impact in 2026. That's a headwind to margins across the space. That means prices are going higher. And on a company-specific basis, companies have the ability to look elsewhere in their P&L to find opportunities to sustain their margins. Margins are going to have some pressure, but we see this as something that we can move past into 2027. You know, it's interesting, Peter, though, because we're waiting now for this Supreme Court decision. We'll see when we get it. But what if they came out, Peter, and they said, OK, you know what, Trump's tariffs, they're illegal. Have you tried to sort of game out what the ripple effects could be in your coverage universe? Yeah, the ripple effects from that are the stocks are going up if they throw away the tariffs. I don't think that's a base case scenario. There are other ways for tariffs to be implemented, whether it be through a category or a country of origin basis. So all else equal, I'm considering the tariffs to be in the numbers. I think that's well understood by market participants. And I think stocks are cheap here. Let's get to some picks while we got you. You like On Holdings. Stocks down about 10% over the past year. How come, Peter? Why is that one a buy? Yeah, On is a pure play growth company. This has best visibility to the highest growth rate in all of footwear and apparel. They're going to grow 20% plus. They're winning over customers. They have a new growth driver in Asia-Pacific. And this is just a different growth animal. So we see from a low single digit share in footwear, this could move much higher. And with execution, we think the stock goes higher, too. How about Levi Strauss? Now, they're around 85% of analysts on the street like this one. You do, too. How come? Yeah, so Levi is benefiting from a denim trend and a structural move towards higher value businesses. That's women's and their own DTC businesses, their e-commerce and their stores. So we see opportunity for margin and revenue to move higher. The stock's inexpensive. So this thing could move higher. And finally, Peter, squeeze this one in. Wolverine Worldwide. Now, that stock has slid about 20% over the past 12 months. Do you think that's an opportunity? Yeah, so Wolverine Worldwide is in the middle endings of a turnaround. They've fixed their balance sheet problems. They now have the two main brands, Merrill and Saucony. Over 60% of their business are as strong as they've been in many, many years. So we see that as driving the entire income statement higher with opportunity for revenue growth to inspire higher margins. And from 10 times PE, this could move higher towards $25. AI trade driving markets higher. But investors are starting to ask whether valuations are getting stretched and whether portfolios are becoming too concentrated. My next guest says there's more than one way to invest in AI and highlights a few alternative assets to do it. Joining me now is Aaron Mulvihill, Global Alternatives Strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management. Aaron, it is great to see you. So let's dig into this. You say, OK, alternatives offer smart opportunities in AI. Let's talk about them. One is infrastructure. Why is infrastructure? Start there. Why is that sort of a relatively smart, clean, less crowded way to play it? Yeah, great to be here, Josh. There is more than one way to access the AI theme, and certainly alternative investments is one way to do it. And so in our alternative investments report that we came out with this year, our eighth year in coming up with the report, one of the breakout themes in it is the accessibility of alternative investments to individual investors. So today, there's about $500 billion of alternative investments accessible as evergreen alternatives, which are a little bit more accessible to investors. As it relates to infrastructure, one of the biggest challenges within AI right now is the power, the accessibility of electricity. That's a big challenge that's constraining the development of data centers. It's something that all of the hyperscalers are focused on. And what private infrastructure funds are doing is they're operating the electricity generation and transmission infrastructure that's necessary for the development of AI. So we see this as an area of enormous growth and a lot of potential for investors to get accessibility to the AI theme in a maybe less, maybe more downside protected way. And why private infrastructure managers? Why would they be better positioned than a public utility? Yeah, it comes down to the public versus private discussion generally. So public companies, everything they do, of course, is very accessible. They have to be very open about their plans. Private infrastructure and private companies in general can act very quickly. They don't have the regulatory burdens often that public companies have. It's cheaper for them to operate. They don't need to IPO the company. There's plentiful capital that they can access. So they can act very quickly. And when it comes to AI, they're in a really good position to be able to make deals with the AI companies, the hyperscalers that need the power now, not 10 years in the future, not talking about long-term development projects, but they're operating power infrastructure that's helpful to achieve the AI goals right now. And Aaron, another thing you mentioned here is private equity. Walk me through that because it sounds like you all are expecting a pretty strong deal environment this year. Private equity is all about dealmaking. And this could be one of the best years for dealmaking that we've seen over the last decade. When we look at the factors that are at play right now, and we were talking about this in 2025, we also had good factors in 2025, but then we had tariffs, we had stock market jitters, and we had a government shutdown that delayed a lot of IPOs. This year, if we don't have, touch wood, some of these challenges, we have a really good backdrop. We have financing costs coming down. That's very helpful for private equity and dealmaking. We have a supportive regulatory environment and business environment. And we have a lot of private equity companies that are ready for sale. A lot of IPOs that are being discussed and pitched. And we might see this year, potentially, the first trillion dollar IPO. When we think of a lot of what's happening within AI, it's private companies, it's venture capital-backed companies that are doing this development, that are building the AI models. These are all operated privately. They're only accessible today to alternative investors. We may see them enter the public market, but a lot of the value has been created and enjoyed by private market investors and public market investors are coming at the tail end. What about private credit, Aaron? Walk me through that theme. So private credit yields are coming down. We're in an interest rate cutting cycle. We had three cuts last year. This year, we're likely to have two more interest rate cuts, depending on how the jobs market plays out. So yields are coming down in private credit, but there's still a healthy premium compared to public market. We see a premium of around 200 to 250 basis points, typically, in private credit relative to public market credit. Are there risks? There certainly are heightened risks when you're talking about higher premiums and higher yields. There's always a commensurate relationship with risks. So it is important to be selective in private credit right now, but we feel that the premium is healthy and can justify some of the challenges that might be out there in the market right now. Finally, Aaron, you upgraded your outlook you see on real estate. How come? Why now? We did upgrade the outlook on real estate. It's all down to supply and demand. We're not building enough houses. We have challenges right now within the real estate space in terms of the amount of real estate that's being developed. Commercial real estate prices are actually in many ways, in many cases, lower than they were pre-COVID. We're still coming out of this work from home, hybrid work environment. And so we're seeing office valuations improve. We're seeing valuations in hospitality, the logistics sector improve. So it's a really great time to be entering the real estate environment where valuations are lower than they were historically, but the rents are very healthy and it's providing healthy income to investors. Damn, are these wildly different companies, despite all hawking AI chips of some capacity. NVIDIA and CEO Jensen Wang are leading the pack on the AI chip front. AMD CEO Lisa Su is putting up a great fight against NVIDIA. And Intel, well, it's trying to do something in AI chips to try to turn itself around. All of this brings me to today's question of the day. What's the best way to profit off the AI revolution? Do you stay long a leader like NVIDIA? Do you wager? And can you take that? And AMD could take market share away from NVIDIA. Or do you toss a Hail Mary pass and go all in on an Intel turnaround? Dan Ayes, I'm thinking you're not a big believer in Intel. Well, look, I mean, you got to think where Intel is today relative to obviously Trump backing and NVIDIA is a whole different story than a year ago. So I do think, look, to me, to play the trade for semis, it's the godfather of AI and NVIDIA. You got to own everything Lisa Su's doing, AMD, Micron, Broadcom and others. Look, Intel, I think that has to be a piece of the portfolio, just given that they're going to play more and more of a role in the AI revolution. You cannot just count them out. They're no longer, like if we were at a wedding, they're no longer at that table by the sort of kitchen with the random people that you're at. They're getting closer to the cooler table. I'm at the cooler table now, Dan. But you're always at the cool table. Nah, it's taken me a while, Dan. It's part of it. Yeah, no, I used to be that guy by hanging out by the fridge. Gil, look, out of these three stocks, is it NVIDIA or Bust? Or can you make a case for NVIDIA and Intel? For the AI trade, we would stick with what's going to work in a wide range of scenarios, which is Microsoft and NVIDIA. Whether we're late in the cycle or early in the cycle, those two have created most of the value so far, and they'll continue to create most of the value so far. So we focus on those. We probably stay away from marginal players in the data center space, in the semi space. We actually think there's still opportunities in software. You can't do AI in an enterprise context without having all the data in one place. That's why you need Snowflake. You can't do AI in an enterprise context without observing the applications that are running that are more complicated than ever. You need Datadog for that. So we wouldn't forget about the fact that a lot of the good investments in AI are still in software, Microsoft, Snowflake, and Datadog. But again, one way or another, we're using NVIDIA chips to do all this. Quick note to the all finance community watching this, you're welcome for all these amazing stock ideas over the past 25 minutes. And Nez, last word to you here. Out of these three stocks, we're not going to ask you to pick a stock because that's not what we do here. But which do you think has the more compelling story? I will give you one bullish note about Intel. All the points that Dan Ives mentioned, but also their advanced packaging technology. This is what Jensen Wang had mentioned when they made that investment in Intel, that $5 billion investment. This is a very interesting space. I've been geeking out a little bit on this. I'm nowhere an engineer, but I will tell you that there are chiplets that they basically stitch together and they stack them together. And this is an interesting area that Intel has that technology. So that's one bullish point for Intel. My person of the day award goes to you, Nez Ferre, because we're dropping the mic on talking about advanced packaging and chips. Thank you to my roundtable. Y'all crushed it. Appreciate it. U.S. ouster of Venezuela's president has raised questions about potential impact on global oil markets. But our next guest says the near-term fundamentals remain largely unchanged. Brian Kessens, Tortoise Capital Advisors, senior portfolio manager and managing director joining us now. Brian, it is great to see you. I do want to start on Venezuela because I'm interested to get your take there, Brian. Maybe start by framing it for us. How important, Brian, is Venezuela now to the global oil market? And what would it take to remake and rebuild it so it became a more meaningful, significant supplier in the years ahead? Yeah, great question. And thanks for having me on today. And I think you characterized it well when you asked, what is it, how important are they now? Now they produce about a million barrels per day, which is significant. But when you look at the global market for oil, it's a little over 100 million barrels per day. So we're talking 1% of overall production. It's almost a rounding error as it relates to today. What gets people excited, though, is where they were 20 years ago when there were 3 million barrels per day and overall oil production was a lot less. They were a much more meaningful impact. And the sense maybe is that they can have that level of exposure on the global market again. But from what I'm reading, Brian, we're talking about really a serious lift here in terms of rebuilding that oil market and oil infrastructure. It is. And I think that we saw some of the market reaction yesterday to some oil stocks. And I don't know that it fully understands it's going to be $100 billion at least 5 to 10 years before we really start to get material gains from a production perspective as it relates to Venezuela. And when we talk about Venezuela, we talk about heavy crude, Brian, right? For maybe those who don't follow this market as closely, this industry, in simple terms, what do we mean by heavy crude? And what are the economics there? Yeah. So it is a heavier crude or almost a lower quality crude. It has more sulfur in it. It moves more like molasses as opposed to like a vinegar, like a light sweet crude moves. It's more similar to the Canadian oil sands than the crude that comes from the Permian Basin. And because it is heavier, it is harder to refine. And many, many years ago, the US recognized this. Hey, we have an advantage, proximity advantage to both this Canadian and this Venezuelan crude. Let's build our refineries so that we can process this lower quality crude in a better way. And because it's lower quality, it's cheaper. It can be anywhere between $10, $20 at times, even $30 per barrel cheaper than a light sweet crude like a WTI or Brent. There's been a lot of hot talk about this, particularly out of Washington. But do you see US oil majors, Brian, moving back into Venezuela aggressively? What would it take to get them to move back in aggressively? Yeah. I think for them to aggressively move back, I don't see them aggressively doing it. I think if they do it, they're going to be very deliberate in how they do it. First off, they're going to have to understand what the political environment is. They don't want to see any risk at all that their resource is, once again, nationalized potentially by Venezuela. So they want to understand, first and foremost, what are the rules of the game and how long can those rules of the game last? And then secondly, how economic can it be for them? Today, oil is between $55 and $60 per barrel. You know, the breakeven costs for Venezuela are a little higher than that. So I think that we're going to need to see a move higher in the overall price and market price for oil before they're going to- And that price of WTI, it was like a $57 last I checked. Where do you all see that kind of moving near to intermediate term? Yeah. In 2026, we think that a range for it, certainly where we're at now, but somewhere between $60 and $70 per barrel is where we see it ending the year. I think in the first part of the year, we're a little bit oversupplied to 300,000 barrels per day, maybe even a little bit more time. But once we hit the summer driving season and demand starts to pick up, it'll become clear again that I think we're going to add about a billion barrels per day or more of demand throughout the course of 2026. I think supply will be a little bit more restrained. And then the back half of the year, I think though, supply and demand will be in much better balance. So Venezuela, basically we're saying important geopolitical event, you don't see it as a kind of a near-term market driver for now? Not over the near term, not at all. Let's get to some places where you do see opportunity, get to some picks, Brian. Williams Companies, ticker WMB, why is that a buy here? Yeah, we're big believers in natural gas and natural gas infrastructure. If we look at natural gas from a demand perspective, in the US alone, we're going to export more natural gas in the form of LNG next year. And in fact, we're probably going to add 10 to 15 BCF per day of LNG export between now and 2030. And then AI, we talked about it on your previous segment a lot. The power needs for it. We think the majority of the power generation is actually going to come from natural gas. So that's another source of demand. Williams has arguably the most strategic pipeline in the US, going from the Gulf Coast up the Atlantic seaboard actually into New York City here. They can build a lot more laterals off of that. And they've taken an approach where they are comfortable supplying the data centers themselves, not only with natural gas, but potentially with the power as well. I think there's a great opportunity in Williams. Final pick, I want to squeeze this one in here too. Energy transfer. Now that stock is down, it looks like nearly 20% over the past 12 months. You think that's an opportunity? Yeah, we do. We think energy transfer from an asset footprint, it's unparalleled amongst anyone else, especially intrastate Texas. They too are in the natural gas infrastructure game. They are going to benefit from the data center build out too. They trade with the yield upper high single digits right now. They just came out actually this morning with forecast for 2026, their guidance. It was above street expectations. We think that as they prove their story out, the cash flow has come through that they'll be rewarded. Brian, appreciate your time in those picks. Thank you, sir. Thank you. My pleasure. Joining me now, we got Dory Wiley, Commerce Street Holdings CEO. Dory, great to see you as always. You know, Dory, 2025 was a strong year. What do we expect in 2026, Dory? What's your base case for the SPX? We're sitting here at 6944. Walk me through the risk and rewards, Dory. What do you think? Well, you know, you're out on a limb here in January, right? Because it's so hard to see forward and January tends to be a bullish month. But we've got three years of positive returns for the S&P 500. The likelihood of a positive year going forward, especially at these multiples, you would think historically would be an extremely low probability. But I keep coming back to this fact that earnings and revenue growth are still very, very strong. You're still looking at double-digit earnings growth, and strongest we've had in four years. And we've had the strongest sales growth we've had in three years. And so you're in the face of maybe at least one more rate cut, right? So I think there's still a very strong possibility, a very strong case, where we could have a good double-digit year. Most people are settling in because of that data, you know, in the 8% to 12% range. But it wouldn't surprise me for it to be another 15% to 20%. What about the Fed, Dory? How do they factor into your outlook? You know, how many cuts in 2026, Dory? What's the base case? You know, people are really underestimating what's going on in the Fed here. So if you hear me out and bear me out a little bit, the majority, two-thirds of these Fed directors at the local regional banks voted against rate cuts at the last meeting because the minutes came out today, right? And the Boston Fed, for example, Susan Collins, the majority of her directors voted against it, and yet she voted for the rate cut. So there's some turmoil building, and the vote was nine to three. So there's dissension there. So people think that we're lined up, and you look at the futures, and they're forecasting two, three, maybe even four cuts out there. I'm not seeing it. I think right now it's, you're lucky to get one more cut. They probably shouldn't do it until the data really proves it up. There's a fight here between the people watching unemployment and those watching inflation. Anybody who's a historical economic economist knows that the inflation is the biggest worry, but yet the Fed has been using almost, especially the Fed governors, almost using unemployment as the cover or the excuse to do some perhaps politically focused cuts. And I think they're getting pushback from their local directors. Dory, another risk I'm thinking about, we're not talking about that much. Maybe we should. The Supreme Court, Dory. I mean, you could hear from them very shortly. Who knows how they rule? Maybe they come out, Dory. They say, you know what? Those Trump tariffs, they are illegal. Then what? I'm just curious how you're thinking through that. That would be a shocker. I don't expect them to do that, but you never know, right? They may assert some independence there and try to puff up and make a statement. I don't know. But I think if they read the letter of the law, they're not going to come down on that side. But if that were to happen, then I don't know that it changes everything as much as everyone thinks. Trump's over there talking about lowering taxes, lowering taxes because of what's going on with tariffs. But you just keep taxes. We've got plenty of run to room, even with this current tax rate, even though it's prohibited. And the answer that the government needs to be giving us is getting rid of all the fraud and waste. Dory, let's talk about where you see opportunity, where you're constructive. You like the banks, and specifically small cap and regionals. How come? Big picture. Well, banks are very strong right now. They survived the 500 basis point rate shock, which is huge. They've done very well. The margins are coming into play. They still have historical high capital ratios. Everyone preached doom and gloom on credit and real estate, which we were all worried about. The underwriting has been the best it's ever been. I'm typically a negative, cautious person. But the banks have done a great job. So looking forward, it's actually going to be easier for them to just keep doing what they're doing and make more money. So if you look at the money center banks, you know, they're trading that 13 to 16 forward P.E. ratios. I can pick up small cap banks and regional banks at 11 times forward P.E. ratios or less, and they're growing faster. They have smaller multiples. And if you look at something like a Huntington, I've got three times the yield that I would in a J.P. Morgan. So, you know, it's kind of a no brainer. I think you can sell, you could do a pair trade, you know, sell the money centers and buy the regionals and small caps. You like Huntington. Let's get you out of here on this. What about third coast bank shares and South Plains Financial, Dory? It's really easy. Both of those are community banks in Texas growing at a very rapid rate. And as a longtime bank investor, we look for banks that are growing core, tangible book value per share growth, you know, in excess of others. Those are the top two fastest growing tangible book value per share growth banks in the state. They're priced right at 11 or lower on forward P.E. ratios. Third Coast is pretty close to tangible book value, just a slight premium. And they're both growing faster than average. And they're in, you know, let's face it, you know, we're in the M&A business and everyone in the country is trying to buy a bank share. Dory, as always, appreciate your time and those stock picks. Thank you, sir. You bet. Investors shaking off concerns about geopolitical risks from the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, the bullish sentiment boosted by greater confidence in fiscal discipline in some of these markets, and more money shifting away from the U.S. Let's talk more about this. Joining me now, Ben Mandel, Gibraltar Capital head of research, and Derek Irwin, Allspring Global Investments senior portfolio manager and co-head of the Intrinsic Emerging Markets Equity team. Guys, thanks for being here. It has been obviously an understatement, an interesting week thus far, an interesting weekend into an interesting week in emerging markets, particularly with Venezuela. So I do want to broaden it out to emerging markets. But first, we got to talk about what happened and what it means for Latin American markets. If anything, Ben, I'll start with you on that. You're actually based in Brazil. So you're based in Latin America. So how are you thinking about any potential spillover effects, or do you think it's going to be fairly limited? Thanks, Julie. Good morning. Well, there are global effects and there are regional effects. So I think let's start with the regional ones. The action in Venezuela has put LATAM in sharp focus for the first time in decades. And you can draw a line between what happened in Venezuela in January, the Trump national security strategy released in December, the bailout of Argentina in October. And that illustrates a paradigm which has very well-defined winners and losers at the country level. And so from a LATAM investor's perspective, that's exactly the right framing. Thinking about highly idiosyncratic, country-specific effects coming from the evolution of U.S. international policy. As you mentioned, I'm based in Brazil. Brazil is an excellent example of a country where the spillovers are generally positive. It's a geopolitically neutral economy. That is to say, it trades, transacts with a lot of countries, but is not dominated by any of them. It's a net winner in the trade war. All of the trade diversion that's coming from China and the U.S. to Brazil. And soybeans is a great example of that. It has a lot to offer in terms of natural resources and critical minerals in particular to a Trump administration that's looking to make deals. And it has a pretty good cyclical starting point. So interest rates are generally high. Inflation has been coming down. And so the starting point makes sense to get in. And so that is to say, it's not all bad news in thinking about who will be affected by the action in Venezuela specifically, but also the spillovers and potential follow-up actions in other Latin American countries. They're also winners. And we classify Brazil as one of the key winners here. And also interesting, the idea that this draws attention to the area, and then hopefully benefits maybe some of the markets that are attractive investments there. Derek, what about you? How are you thinking about Venezuela through the lens of emerging market stocks and what the implications could be? Yeah, I think if we look at emerging markets more broadly, but certainly Latin America, the way I look at Venezuela is geopolitically, obviously, incredibly important. From a market moving or economic standpoint, obviously not as important, at least in terms of first order effects. But I really like the concept of bringing attention to what is already a very positive story in Latin America. And we're overweight the region. We have been coming into the year and certainly coming into this event for exactly those reasons. We think the markets are inexpensive. They're largely ignored by a lot of investors after several years of underperformance. And the macroeconomic setup is pretty good. So I think that to the extent that there are geopolitical ramifications or second order events, it probably is largely positive for Latin America, in the sense that, ironically, the action in Venezuela may bring some stability. And it may also give a tailwind to some of the more market-friendly candidates in this year's elections. We have some big elections coming up. Obviously, Brazil, Colombia, Peru over the next year. And we think that the influence of the US and the influence of some of these actions could be a tailwind to some of the more market-friendly candidates. I think the interesting question will be, do we see further reverberations beyond Latin America into certainly Asia and China and even into the Middle East? And I think there's room to look for real opportunities there in the wake of this. Well, Derek, something I want to follow on that that I'm curious about, because certainly President Trump has mentioned some other countries that have been under his scrutiny. Colombia, as you mentioned, is one of them. And while the situation in Venezuela hasn't had spillover, I wonder if there are other incursions, if the risks would be potentially greater than the potential market benefits. I think it's really hard to say. I mean, Colombia, you're absolutely right. I think Trump has made some comments there. Even Greenland, who knows? He's made some interesting comments farther afield. Of course, in Iran, and there's a government that is right now looking quite shaky. So it would be very interesting to see two very large oil states potentially fall or change leadership over the next year. Although I think it would be very unlikely that the U.S. would try to do something like we saw in Venezuela and Iran. And then, of course, we do need to think about Cuba. Obviously, from an investment standpoint, not as important, but geopolitically, I think that would send a very, very important message to the rest of the world. So it becomes a politically really exciting time. And for investors like us, often that creates dislocations in the market that we can take advantage of. OK, so let's take a step back then. And as we talked about, brought it out to more sort of emerging markets in Latin America and beyond. Ben, this year we, or I should, this year. I'm still used to saying this year. In 2025, we saw outperformance of international stocks versus U.S. stocks. Does that continue in 2026? And in particular, do we see outperformance of emerging market stocks? I think there's broad opportunity thinking about emerging markets as a whole. So EM writ large. Global markets tend to prefer indirect conflict to direct conflict. And so this pivot towards the Americas that we've seen from the Trump administration is not out of nowhere. It's a function of its lived experience in 2025. Despite appearances, there are real limits to Trumponomics and Trump's international policies. And the most striking of those limits was shown by China and its critical minerals export restrictions, effectively saying that leveraging U.S. bargaining power to extract concessions from our trading partners can only go so far. It cannot continue ad infinitum. And so the pivot to Latin America through that lens makes total sense. Venezuela is an important trading partner with China, with Russia, with Iran. And markets generally like that indirect conflict, or at least prefer it to direct confrontation with China. The negative spillovers to U.S. growth are lower, and it's generally a recipe for risk sentiment to be a little bit more buoyant, which are the conditions, kind of the necessary conditions for EM markets to outperform. And so we see a lot of scope for that to continue in 2026. Yeah, we'll see if the conflicts do remain less direct, so to speak. Derek, I know that you're bullish on emerging markets in 2026 as well. Are there any specific ones that you think have the most room for upside? Look, I think there's probably three big drivers for the market in 2025 that can drive upside. Certainly, I think the AI trade has legs. And I think you had a great segment before this at the CES that really talked about some of the opportunities in memory and computing chips. And of course, companies like TSMC and Samsung and SK Hynix in emerging markets really sit at the center of that, and they should continue to benefit. In addition, China, of course, has a very strong AI ecosystem that in many ways is developing in parallel to that of the West and is equally interesting and maybe underexplored by a lot of investors. So there's really two AI drivers in EM. Beyond that, of course, we do think some of the drivers that will buoy Latin America in terms of lower inflation, potentially lower interest rates, will also help a lot of other emerging markets, like, for instance, South Africa, which is seeing significant government reform, significant fall in inflation, and should see rates come down, which should boost the consumer. So I think that's great. And the third message we have for investors who may be looking at emerging markets for the first time in some time is that it's very likely, in our view, that the relative risk of investing in emerging markets versus, say, developed markets is much less than they might have thought. I think emerging markets have generally been considered the sort of very risky tail on the investing asset allocation dog. And I'm not sure that's the case anymore. I think over the last 10 years, emerging markets have generally become a less risky place to park capital. And arguably, developed markets have become more risky. So I think there's a lot of reasons for investors who are looking to dip their toes back into emerging markets to be comfortable doing so. Really interesting stuff, guys. Thank you both so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Let's start with your big picture outlook for 2026 as informed by some of the Investopedia readers, perhaps. Yeah, readers, individual investors, those we survey, those that come to Investopedia are pretty confident going into the end of this year and why not? And the end of 2025, I should say, and why not? They've had pretty substantial gains. And you and I have talked about this. Individual investors, retail investors kind of stuck with it through all the tops and turns that we saw in 2025, through all the tariff craziness, through all the big dips in the big mega tech stocks. They kept buying. They kept confident. And I think they're going to continue to be so going into this year. That said, they are worried about bubbles. They're worried about bubbles in the AI stocks. But as you know, they own these very same stocks that they're worried about, yet they continue to buy them. So it's this weird feeling of, well, things are pretty good and I've done very well, but I'm worried that maybe we've done a little bit too well. I'm not willing to change the composition of my portfolio. Ironic that on the first trading day of 2026, we see a lot of those same stocks leading the way. Yeah. And we're going to get to some individual names in a second here. I just want to go over some of the risks. You've already highlighted some of those for the year. Midterm elections, another one of those. And we have this four-year presidential cycle. And this particular year in which we have the midterms can be a little bit dicey, especially in the second, third quarter. That's just a seasonality play. That's history. Anything else on your radar or that you want to add to that? Yeah, we've got to watch the labor market. Everything else seems OK. We just got that first initial reading on third quarter GDP that blew past estimates, over 4% there. So I think that we've got to watch the labor market because the labor market will dictate the direction of the Fed, even though we're going to get a new Fed chair by May. Fed chair Powell's term ends in May of this year. And the president has promised to name a nominee. We'll probably get one pretty soon here to fill that chair. It's going to be a more dovish Fed. That said, if the labor market continues to weaken, the Federal Reserve, no matter who's in charge, will have no choice but to potentially loosen interest rates a little bit more, which could trigger inflation. So all these things are connected. That said, the labor market is the linchpin. If the labor market weakens, we get unemployment rate over 5%. Consumer spending is going to weaken. And that, as you know, has been powering a lot of the discretionary spending. I know you're going to talk about travel stocks and luxury travel. That's been really strong. But if the labor market weakens, you're going to see spending drop from the top all the way down through the bottom ranges of the income earners throughout the United States of America. And the good news there, at least we're going to get the data on time, at least for the near future, I hope. I want to call up the Wi-Fi Interactive here. We have a heat map with some of the stocks that you are watching this year. And this is today's performance as we see it. We can see Constellation up about 5% there. I'm going to put a one-year look, just so we see what these stocks have done over the last year. Berkshire Hathaway up 10%, despite, I guess this is the first day that Greg Abel is taking over for Buffett. We got Oracle there. Constellation, as I just went over. Robinhood up 185%. And then Strategy down about 50%. Let's go through them. Yeah, these are the stocks that I'm watching pretty closely. Let's start with Oracle, the poster child of the AI overspend. Potentially a lot of doubts going into the end of the year about Oracle's spend on AI, about its investments in open AI, but also a lot of concerns about its debt. Now, there's a lot of other companies to be concerned about. Oracle is a very strong company with a big market cap and pretty solid leadership. That said, this is the one stock that a lot of investors were focused on towards the end of the year. Is this going to be sustainable? Is the spend on AI going to pay off? I'm watching that pretty closely. Constellation has been doing very well as the de facto poster child power generator for the AI build out of all these data centers. So it's been an extremely strong stock. Is that demand going to continue? Constellation being among the biggest of the power generators, providing to this sector. I'm watching that stock closely to see if that demand continues and if the enthusiasm among investors for these power stocks that are supposed to be power in the AI build out remains. And also Robinhood, one of the strongest stocks of 2025. That is a huge risk play. But Robinhood has been making some very substantial moves over the last couple of years. The most recent move is this move into sports betting. And you and I have talked about this, this slamming together of sports betting, probability betting, stock trading, day trading, crypto, DeFi, and 24-6 trading tokenization. All this is coming together very quickly. Robinhood is right in the middle of it. Let's see if the investor enthusiasm for Robinhood continues as well. And then you just mentioned Berkshire Hathaway. It's the beginning of a brand new era. The beginning of a brand new era. The Berkshire, the Buffett premium may have disappeared. The stock was up 10% last year, but the market was much better than that. We'll see what happens with that huge cash trove. And we know Buffett's not going to just disappear and start playing. Oh, he's still chairman. Bridge. He's still chairman. He's going to be consulted on everything, but this is Greg Abel's company now going forward. I want to watch Berkshire Hathaway. So many people have become millionaires and billionaires with that stock over the past 50 years. One more here. I don't think we got to strategy. So this is a stock that was kind of bucking the trend of all these other winners here. So, and this is a stock that was just, I'm going to show, that's a one-year chart. Let's show the five-year chart there. And you can see this is, it's looking kind of bubbly there in 2025. What do you think this portends for the next year? Well, remember strategy was micro strategy, but then Michael Saylor said, I'm going to go all in on becoming a Bitcoin treasury. The problem with becoming a Bitcoin treasury is that that's your balance sheet. And even if Bitcoin is down, what was Bitcoin down some 20, 25% towards the end of this year, end of 2025. If you're a Bitcoin treasury, that means your balance sheet is heavily dependent on the fluctuations in that coin. And you're being valued off of what might happen. And that's why you see that stock being down much worse than Bitcoin itself. That seemed like a good idea at the time as Bitcoin was soaring to $120,000 per coin. But as soon as that coin starts falling, and as soon as there's doubts around, the strength of the momentum with Bitcoin, which seemed to fall apart towards the end of 2025, you're going to see companies that are relying heavily on putting Bitcoin in its treasury. And that includes Tesla too, by the way. You're going to see them suffer even worse than the price of the coin itself. Interesting. We got time for one more. So anything else you want to tell the viewers for this broadcast about the new year? Yeah, well, there's a ton of things that could happen. It's going to be a very dynamic year. But as you and I have talked about on your pod and in other places, this tokenization of assets, real stocks and other real assets that are backed by actual things like either gold or the dollar or by a company's balance sheet, those being tokenized and being traded 24-6 on this new exchange in Texas, that is going to do some very interesting things to pricing. We're entering this brand new era where all of a sudden you have the real stock, which trades 9.30 to 4 plus after hours trading. And then you have the tokenized version of these stocks that are going to be trading 24 hours a day, six days a week at potentially different prices. What is that going to do to price discovery in general? I think we're in for a lot of discovery ourselves as investors as to what this actually means. That said, you go back to the very beginning. This is the fourth year of a bull market. Bulls that run this far usually do pretty well in their fourth year, despite the volatility we will see around midterm elections. You and I both follow Seth Stovall at CFRA. We know what happens during midterm election years. Expect a correction, if not worse. But this bull does have momentum and that momentum is coming from those profit gains. A lot of the big stocks are driving that. Let's see if they can continue to run in 2026. I appreciate your optimism there, Caleb. Great to start the year with you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Nancy, good to see you. I have just realized I've spent too much time the past two weeks talking about Google and Amazon. I want to go to one of your picks for next year. That is Palantir. Make your case. Oh, well, we love the name from a defense standpoint. They are the leader in AI and data with defense department approval and usage and then beyond that, corporate adoption and sovereign adoption. So we think the name continues. It's one of those names, Brian, you can't justify it from a valuation standpoint, just like one of our names in our six for 26 Tesla, which you were just talking about. Hard to defend the valuation, but the narrative is quite compelling and that can drive stocks for a very long time like it did Amazon for the first 20 years of Amazon's IPO life. So Nancy, is it more, how do you, I mean, so when you're looking at a company like Palantir, do you just suspend everything that you've learned on valuation? I mean, I've done the same too when looking at Palantir. I mean, this stock is traded at crazy multiples. Yeah, I mean, I'm a classically trained value investor and one of the things that you had to learn as a value investor is when to pivot. And I don't mean it's different this time or change your discipline. You just have to look at things a little bit differently when the earnings are not what they might be based on valuation or at all in the case of Amazon. I missed the first, I don't know, 20 years of IPO life for Amazon and the stock's up 175, 180,000% since the IPO. When was it too late to get in? I mean, we eventually did. We began to understand the world was different in many ways in terms of this is a transformative company and that's what Palantir is. It's what a number of the names in our six for 26 are. What is the better buy, Nancy, Palantir or Tesla? Or should you have both of these names in your portfolio because they're both strong AI players? I mean, if I had to tip the scale, I would say Tesla is probably our favorite and that's why it's in our six for 26. It is the transformative AI leader. It's not just full self-driving, but it's also robotics. And even if you look beyond that in the XAI investment the company is making per shareholder approval, we think all of that is super powerful and we'd love to get a bite at the space business when they IPO. So I think this is a company that has a vision unlike, and it's the CEO obviously, unlike any other company that we own. How much of a factor on Tesla is Elon's $1 trillion pay package? I mean, how do you grade that? Because that could be, even for the world's richest person, that could be something highly motivating. Well, I think he's internally motivated. If you read Walter Isaacson's biography, Elon said, I'm programmed for war. And that is when he is at his best. He often teeters on the edge of disaster, pulls back just in time, and then delivers on what many thought were ridiculous promises. And sometimes they've not happened in a timely fashion for sure. But if you look at what he is envisioning, it's not just EVs, obviously. I mean, the car numbers are disappointing, but think of Tesla's EV business to the AI portion of the business, what Apple's handset business was to services in the ecosystem. And so Apple had many years of underperformance in terms of delivering growth in the handset business, but they were growing the services business at a rapid pace and continue to do so. So we think he is the story. He delivered on the last sort of absurd levels of incentives for the company and is now actually gonna get paid for that. It isn't the money for him. I think it's the control. Nancy, I think people forgot about Amazon. Underperformed this year. I wrote a story yesterday on Yahoo Financing laying out why the stock could rise 50% next year. I got a lot of, let's say negative feedback on that. Very important. I wasn't making this call. I was just laying out the reasons why it could happen. Am I out of my mind here? Welcome to the investment business. No, I saw it and I do agree. I think there are a number, it's been a laggard. They delivered robust earnings. I mean, really a massive earnings beat last quarter. The AWS business is very mature, but still growing at 20%. And they offered this tidbit that I didn't see many people talk about. And that is that October growth in that business was bigger than the whole third quarter. So I wouldn't underestimate them. Tranium is at full capacity and has a backlog. And it's a stock that's trading at a peg of 1.4 times. If you go back and look at the S&P historically, it's traded at a peg of 1.5 to two times. So I think this company is fairly valued and has the ability to deliver not just robust earnings growth, but free cashflow is going to increase next year to levels we haven't seen in five years. And Nancy, you're a good company because Warren Buffett has also liked Amazon. That brings me out to my next topic. Tomorrow is his last day as CEO. It almost is surreal to see this day finally here, but nothing lasts forever. What have you learned from Warren Buffett's investing career? What principles have you applied to how you do business? Perspective, I think, Brian. I mean, I actually, little known fact, I managed $100 million portfolio for Cologne Reinsurance, which was acquired by Buffett at Berkshire. And so for a year, they kept us on and we managed money for Warren Buffett. I think it was out of the kindness of his heart because we were new. We generated great returns for the firm, but he has a perspective. And I would say that kindness matters in this business. There's a lot of people that are not humble. They don't learn from their mistakes and they're not the kind of people you want to hang out with, as you saw as a result of your article. He has never engaged in that. And he has been steady at the helm. He has perspective. And when he pivoted to Apple, though we were already in the stock, I thought that was an important moment to pay attention to. Is that one of the best ways to become a better investor, Nancy, to learn from your mistakes? Not every investment is going to work out. 100%. I have a team of analysts. That's all I talk about with them. And some can't do it. And we just, we had one that recently left and that was the reason. You have to have the humility to learn from your mistakes and also admit them. If you can't admit them, then you don't learn from them. So I make a mistake every day. We have a, I don't know what you call it, but a watch word or a watch sentence in our firm, which is investing is about being mostly right. And if you're mostly right, you'll generate top 1% returns. And we've been able to do that over the long term. But we're not right every day. And it's a humbling business. Indeed it is. Nancy, always good to see you. Happy holidays. Happy New Year. I look forward to talking to you again soon. You too, Brian. Thank you.