All right, let's do it.
Time now to get to the big story.
Breakdown on this Friday morning, about 23 minutes away from the start of trading in 2026.
The modern stock market has been around for a little over 420 years, and the iconic New York Stock Exchange is now in year 233.
The NYSE is only 17 years younger than the good old US of A, which is celebrating its 250th year here in 2026.
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins was here in December at the big board talking about the federal efforts to realize the promise of the nation's capital markets in this its 250th year.
So it's certainly a pivotal 12 months with a lot to live up to.
We'll be here at the NYSC trying to do just that.
Joining me now is someone who knows a thing or two or many all about that.
The truly great Peter Tuchman, senior floor trader for Trade Moss, one of our Favorite people here in the big board community.
Great to have you here.
All the best.
Out of the 250 years, right, out of the 250 years I've been here for 137 of them.
That's it.
Don't you look good?
Yes, well, we all had these on the floor because of you, so all the best for the New Year's holiday. for many, many years, right?
I think I've, I've got flashing glasses and I've got, I've got, I've got Dow hats going back to 100.
And I've got maybe 4000.
I'm exaggerating.
And then I have flashing glasses going back to the early 2000s.
So I know you've told me you already have your hats printed.
I think probably the next big benchmark.
We're going to look for S&P 77,000 and Dow 50,000.
We got through 49,000.
We've pulled back a little bit since then, but I mean you just described it, the landmarks that you've laid out to us about what happened in 2025 about the Dow.
Being up double digits and the S&P double digits and the Nasdaq double digits and gold and silver up triple digits and you know think about it if we go back to 2020, right?
I mean that's why I always think that people need to understand how incredible a man Jay Powell is and it's not a political statement, it's an economic statement.
He's navigated us through.
We're up 125% since COVID.
Right?
I mean, we've had only one down year since COVID, right?
And we've had double digit growth on all of them and, and, you know, everything possible that could be thrown at a market has been thrown at this market, not only in 2020 all the way through 2025.
I would say the most 2025.
Think of 2025 if we look back on it, it was a year of a new administration.
It was a year of that mini crash, February, March, and April, you know, Armageddon, if you wanted to call it that, Independence Day, Liberation Day, right?
The summer of love, you know, the The interest rate cutting cycle, you know, government shutdown, government reopen, the blackout of the economic data, right, then that bizarre thing that happened when they decided that AI was a bubble in the middle of November and we sold off the probability of an interest rate cut in December going down to 15% and the market selling off and then it went up to 88% and the market rallied beautifully and then wonderful numbers for Thanksgiving showing.
That the economic data was better than expected right leading up to what you said was that I think everyone needs to look at the nuance of the last Fed meeting Wednesday when we were here for the last trading day.
I feel like even though it's a, it's only a day ago that we were in 2025 and now we're in a whole new year, right?
But what they said there was that it was literally the slightest thing.
That made a difference between the fact that we would have cut interest rates or not and they were just about to err on not cutting, but they decided to go with it and that showed that the economic data.
It's better than we think.
So I'm happy about that because that means we closed out the year with mainstream America doing a little better than they had been doing, right?
And so that's a good thing, but we're going to start the year with amazing thresholds and landmarks to look forward to, and I think there are always two sides to the market.
The market's up 40 handles already this morning.
My gut was that we were going to pull back, but once again I asked my friend Dan Ives, and Dan Ives believed that we are setting ourselves up.
For The interest rate cutting cycle.
We are now 3 into it, right?
We are probably going to because Jay Powell is on his way out in April and the president is going to be putting someone in there who is way more dovish than he is and so we are going to continue to cut rates and An interest rate cutting cycle historically year over year you have at least a 16% rally.
So this is what we have to look forward to if this interest rate cutting cycle continues.
We have AI, we have data centers, we've got whatever energy sector is going on there.
For everyone who's wondering if Santa Claus is coming to town, we still technically do have two trading sessions left in what's historically known as the Santa Claus rally window because it includes the first two days of the new year, that's today and Monday, and we're already up 35 handles.
That's significant.
That's a nice rally to come out of it, you know, yes, we did pull back on 2 days at the end of last year, which was just a couple of days ago, and you know, look, at the end of the day, it was, I don't think you look, you look at any.
Deeper into it than what it was, it was probably just a little profit taking coming into the end of the year.
People would think about it.
I always try to put myself in the mindset of a hedge fund manager sitting up on a desk thinking, you know what, I'm going to go if the market, it tried to rally, it just couldn't get its footing in the last couple of days because those were the two options, right?
It was either going to rally in and window dressing and close them at the highs, or there were going to be a little bit of profit taking.
It lost a little steam.
It could have been for any number of reasons, but there was a minor pullback.
The last of the year, but we still ended up with those double digit growths that you talked about.
Yes, our number to beat is 6909.78.
That was the close last Tuesday, the 23rd, coming into the Santa Claus rally window.
We still have today, we still have Monday.
Other big catalysts that you'll be paying attention to to give you some sense of how January goes historically and how closely you kind of lean into the technical indicator side of things, but we track, you know, the January barometer historically as January goes, so too goes the year.
What are you going to be Paying attention to in the coming sessions and weeks here, isn't it wonderful the way they've, I mean historic data and machine learning can tell you about what every month is going to be.
I think if we learned anything from 2025, is that the seasonality and a lot of those things are maybe out the door, right, because look, September, October should have been soft.
They were strong.
November should have been robust.
It was weak, you know, so I'm not sure who's scratching who's back.
But anyway, at the end of the day, what am I looking for?
Jensen, the godfather of AI, told us last year that the things to watch is going to be the energy sector and how are we going to fulfill the data centers and is that coming from nuclear, is it coming from solar?
I did an interview last year.
I did an interview with a gentleman who was working here with the NYSE in a periodical called Payload.
It's all about the space sector.
Now we know one thing which is fascinating is that SpaceX is already.
Valued at 1.5 billion billion, yes, $1.5 billion and that's not even near the IPO price.
It's going to be even more robust than that.
And then apparently there's chatter about making data centers in space, right, and how wild that would be because there's a solar, you know, I guess the efficiency of solar up there.
I mean, I don't know how you get it back down here, but I'm sure we've figured anything out.
So I think the energy sector is something worth watching.
Quantitative is probably something worth watching.
You know, and then I interviewed this 11-year-old boy the other day, a young man named Kono, and he and I are going to be doing a YouTube thing.
We should do an interview with the three of us.
He was so bright, and I asked him, What are you looking for?
And he goes, I'm actually reiterating what he said.
He said, I'm looking at a little bit of the Quan thing.
I'm looking at the MG 7 to see if there's a follow through on that, but I'm really looking at energy, how are we going to fuel these data centers that are really going to take it to the next level.
Said what will benefit the most from an interest rate cutting cycle is the banks.
Yes, and so I think that's what we have to look forward to.
Yes, financials at the top of a lot of people's man, I imagine this conversation back in 1792 when they did the Buttonwood agreement.
We'll be putting data centers up in space, how things have changed.
I was there for that.
I didn't sign the agreement, but I was there for that.
The lunch that we had at Fraunces Tavern with George Washington was extraordinary.
It was a good time.
Peter Tuchman, senior floor trader for Trade Mass, a very happy 2026.
Thanks for kicking things off with us.
My pleasure.
Thank you.
Happy New Year.
