I'm going to have to get energy somehow.

Do you have like a hype song?

Alexa, play Fortunate Sun by Creedon's Clearwater Revival.

Oh, nope.

Let me find some license music that we can actually use.

There we go.

You're listening to the Barron Streetwise podcast.

I'm Jack Howe.

With me, our audio producer, Alexis Moore. Hi, Jack. My email box is

filling up with all the 2006 look ahead reports, the predictions for what's going to come

to pass in the stock market. Everyone sounds so confident. Here's some, this is someone I don't

know. It just says in the subject line, 2006 will break the four-year crypto cycle. I think crypto has already started tanking. So I don't know if we're breaking the tanking cycle or the pre-tanking cycle. And it's going to tank more. I don't know. Here's one from someone I do know, Barclays. This is Venu Krishna. We had him on the podcast just a little while ago.

It says our 2026 S&P 500 price target goes to 7,400 from 7,000. Taking earnings estimates up.

It talks about mega caps continuing to execute. Talks about the AI race showing no signs of slowing. That price

target works out to 12% upside from here, almost 13%. That would be nice. I don't know if it's

going to happen. Stocks look very expensive. The S&P is at 25 times earnings. I'm not predicting

a crash, but I'm also definitely predicting a crash.

They just happen every so often. The key is, I can't tell you whether it will be next week

or next year or many years from now. Not very helpful, I know. So you either stick with the S&P 500

and hope that prices continue to climb, or you diversify into something that can give you a downside protection, but that something probably isn't doing nearly as well as all these big AI stocks.

So if you're wrong, you miss out in return.

It's a pickle.

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