Macro

As of mid-2026, the Federal Reserve under Chair Kevin Warsh has held its target rate at 3.50%-3.75% after no cuts this year, reversing earlier expectations. The FOMC cited solid economic growth despite Middle East conflict-driven uncertainty. With the last cut in late 2025, the Fed's dot plot and CME's FedWatch tool now indicate a possible rate hike later in 2026, driven by rising energy prices and geopolitical tensions. Experts like Gary Pzegeo of CIBC Private Wealth expect one or two increases to cool demand. Consumers are advised to pay down variable-rate debt, lock in fixed borrowing rates, and boost savings in anticipation of higher borrowing costs.

Housing stayed frozen as mortgage rates lingered at 6.5-7.5% and sales hit multi-decade lows, while office CRE distress deepened against a wall of maturities; home values held on lock-in scarcity, and the Fed's September cut brought modest hope.

PJM’s capacity auction for the 2025/26 delivery year cleared at $269.92/MW-day — roughly nine times the prior auction’s $28.92 — with zonal caps hit at $466.35 in the BGE zone and $444.26 in Dominion; the total cost to consumers jumped from $2.2 billion to $14.7 billion. Plant retirements, rising load including datacenters, and new risk-based accreditation rules made capacity suddenly scarce, a windfall for incumbent generators such as Vistra, Constellation and Talen.

Energy sector sentiment is modestly bullish this month, driven primarily by record-high capacity prices in the PJM interconnection that have reinforced incentives for new generation development. The spike underscores tightening supply margins and rising confidence in near-term power market fundamentals. Broader market stability and policy tailwinds provide supportive context, but the PJM signal is the dominant sector-specific driver.

A faulty security update crashed 8.5 million Windows machines, halting airlines, banks, hospitals and exchanges worldwide. CrowdStrike shares plunged and the event repriced single-vendor concentration risk across the software sector.

The tech sector is trading higher this month despite a severe operational setback, as the CrowdStrike-induced Microsoft outage—largest in history—spurred immediate demand for remediation tools and cybersecurity reviews. The incident underscored critical dependencies on a narrow set of software providers, accelerating enterprise focus on system resilience and third-party risk management. This has boosted investor confidence in infrastructure monitoring, incident response platforms, and cloud security providers, driving sector-wide upside.

As of mid-2026, the Federal Reserve under Chair Kevin Warsh has held its target rate at 3.50%-3.75% after no cuts this year, reversing earlier expectations. The FOMC cited solid economic growth despite Middle East conflict-driven uncertainty. With the last cut in late 2025, the Fed's dot plot and CME's FedWatch tool now indicate a possible rate hike later in 2026, driven by rising energy prices and geopolitical tensions. Experts like Gary Pzegeo of CIBC Private Wealth expect one or two increases to cool demand. Consumers are advised to pay down variable-rate debt, lock in fixed borrowing rates, and boost savings in anticipation of higher borrowing costs.

A soft-landing year with resilient spending and September Fed cuts, but a bifurcated consumer (strained low-end, softening restaurant traffic) and EV-demand disappointment (BYD outselling Tesla, Hertz dumping EVs) capped the mood; October ports strike briefly snagged goods flow.

GLP-1 leaders (Lilly hitting record value) kept me euphoric early, but managed care melted down under Medicare Advantage rate cuts and rising medical costs, the Change Healthcare cyberattack disrupted the system, and Medicare's first negotiated drug prices bit;

Reshoring, infrastructure spending and a booming data-center/electrification capex cycle (power and electrical equipment) kept order books strong; Boeing's quality crisis and the Key Bridge collapse were specific drags…

As of mid-2026, the Federal Reserve under Chair Kevin Warsh has held its target rate at 3.50%-3.75% after no cuts this year, reversing earlier expectations. The FOMC cited solid economic growth despite Middle East conflict-driven uncertainty. With the last cut in late 2025, the Fed's dot plot and CME's FedWatch tool now indicate a possible rate hike later in 2026, driven by rising energy prices and geopolitical tensions. Experts like Gary Pzegeo of CIBC Private Wealth expect one or two increases to cool demand. Consumers are advised to pay down variable-rate debt, lock in fixed borrowing rates, and boost savings in anticipation of higher borrowing costs.

A strong bull market, spot-Bitcoin-ETF approvals (an asset-gathering bonanza), reviving M&A and IPOs, Fed rate cuts, and the private-credit boom made it an excellent year, capped by a post-election bank rally on deregulation hopes and Bitcoin topping $100,000.

AI-driven ad targeting and record political-ad spending powered a strong year; streaming reached profitability and Meta/Alphabet/Netflix led the sector higher. Steadily positive.

A euphoric turnaround as the AI data-center load boom repriced us as power plays for the first real demand growth in twenty years, Fed rate cuts revived the yield bid, and nuclear-restart and SMR deals ignited a generation renaissance.

Gold broke out to a string of record highs on central-bank buying and the Fed's rate-cut cycle, copper spiked to a record in May on electrification demand, and precious-metals owners enjoyed a strong, appreciating year.

Early-year uncertainty from the Congressional Ukraine-aid stall gave way to April's $61B supplemental, and Iran-Israel strikes, the Israel-Hezbollah war and China's Taiwan drills sustained record global demand;