Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.

Hello and welcome to the Morning Filter podcast.

I'm Susan Chubinsky with Morning Star.

Every Monday before market open, I sit down with Morningstar's chief U.S. market strategist, Dave Sikara, to talk about what investors should have on their radars for the week,

some new Morning Star research, and a few stock ideas. Before we get started this week, we have

a couple of programming notes. First, we will not be streaming a new episode of the morning

filter next Monday, January 19th due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, but we'll be back live

the following Monday, which is January 26th, just in time for the next Fed meeting. Also, we hope

you'll join us for Morningstar's quarterly outlook webinar this Thursday, January 15th, at 12 p.m.

Eastern, 11 a.m. Central. Dave and Morningstar economist Preston

Caldwell will take an in-depth tour of their outlooks for the stock market and for the economy

in 2026. You can register for the webinar via the link beneath us in the show notes.

And then Dave, I saw you made Business Insiders

2025 oracles of Wall Street List. So I'm not going to start calling you Oracle,

but I really can't wait to hear what you have to say during the webinar this week about

your about the year ahead. So, so let's look at first the week ahead. We have futures down this morning

on news that the Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve

Chairman Jerome Powell. So Dave, what's your take on whether the uncertainty around this now

will be any sort of headwind for stocks.

You know, Susan, actually even before we get to that, I just want to show off a new coffee

mug my son got for me.

I thought today was going to be a pretty good apropos day to pull this one out.

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