Let's get to the big story.
Breakdown while US stocks log three straight years of double-digit percentage gains in 2025, pushing past tariff drama, a government shutdown, and on and off fears of an AI bubble.
Now looking back, the S&P 500 finished up 16%.
The Nasdaq up 19%, and the Dow ending the year ahead by 13% even after a small pullback.
In the final session as we kick off the first full trading week of 2026, I'm joined by Peter Tuchman, senior floor trader at Trade Moss.
Happy New Year, Peter.
Great to see you absolute pleasure.
Well, right now we are looking at futures higher on this Monday morning despite all the concerns about geopolitics.
So where do we go from here?
You know what, look, I'm so excited about what you just kind of broke down to.
Imagine that we had 1619, and 13% relatively this past year, right?
Taking into account everything that was thrown at this market in 2025 to have been able to close all three of our major indices up double digits is extraordinary, right, because look, it didn't always look that way during the year, right?
We know we obviously had that time February, March, April it looked kind of rough.
There were bits during the summer that were harder, September, October.
We're actually good, but then we had the government shutdown, then we had the government reopen, and we had that crazy eye bubble.
You broke it down beautifully in the beginning intro to just say that in a year that's seen absolutely every possible thing happen to close it out in double up double digits across the board is extraordinary resilience in the economy, resilience in the market, and Not irrational but incredible enthusiasm globally from retail to institutional as far as the markets go.
Where do we go from here?
Well, it's nice to start the first morning of the year.
We did have a nice little rally on Friday, so the first trading day of the year was also slightly bullish.
We do know that how January goes historically is how the market will go, right?
That's an old Wall Street thing. we see the market trade in January will be how the market trades for the year.
Right now there's a lot of positivity, but there's also a lot of anxiety around the attack in Venezuela.
How is that going to affect oil?
How is that going to affect our geoglobal partners in lots of different ways.
So once again, you never get disappointed that this market is ever going to be boring because boom, we're one tweet away from crazy tech.
Yes, and speaking of which, all eyes are on.
Downtown Manhattan this morning.
Maduro and his wife have arrived in downtown Manhattan, and we are keeping a close eye on their arraignment, of course, this morning, and you were asking about crude oil prices.
We haven't seen a bump, but we are seeing a rally in oil stocks as well as oil services companies.
So what do you make of all of this?
You know, look, it's going to be curious to understand how this plays out, right?
Obviously, so we know that Venezuela has a A reserve, a prudent reserve of over 12 $7 trillion in oil.
Now we do also know that the oil that is in Venezuela is heavy oil and so it's not easily exploitable, but we already know as an asset we do have $7 trillion there already and so obviously it's going to be how does this play out?
Do we take over this oil? how are we positioning ourselves, you know, whenever we've taken over countries before you know it's been very sketchy sketchy, sketchy at best.
I think the oil.
Companies and the oil companies are going to be brought in, right?
That's probably why they're rallying.
You've got the Exxons and the Chevrons of the world that are probably going to be brought in by the US to start taking over the exploitation of the oil that they have in Venezuela.
It is the 3rd, 4th, 5th largest producer in the world.
And you know how do you make sense of this?
Think about it.
For me, oil is a hard game to play because the players that are in it are so huge, right?
You've got Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia.
China and the United States and Venezuela and so how are they going to respond to this this thing, you know, they may not be as thrilled about this takeover as you would think, right?
Like what's the US doing?
How are they positioning themselves?
Are they trying to become an even bigger global oil partner anyway, you know what, there's a lot to unpack in this story.
I think we're going to go a day at a time to see how this is, you know, and what happens with the president of Venezuela yet more to be determined.
And of course we're also keeping an eye on Las Vegas as the Consumer Electronics Show kicks off.
And of course we're going to hear from Nvidia CEO as well as AMD and a handful of other tech companies, especially when it comes to AI.
We're paying attention to CES.
So what are your expectations?
My expectations are that we're going to see a continuation of this incredible revolution that my friend Dan Ives always talks about.
Maybe now we're in the 3rd inning of this 9 inning game that's going.
In extra innings.
We are in the middle of an industrial revolution relative to AI.
AI is not a bubble, at least not in my opinion, and I think it should be, it's all borne out by the amount of money that's being put in.
The CPE expenditure is in the trillions.
I think we're going to hear some incredible stories about coming out of CES and Jensen.
We're also going to start to see how this plays out in the data center space, right?
How is that going to affect?
I mean, we were told by By Jensen at the end of last year that energy is the thing to watch.
How are we going to be the generators going to be working to make these data centers work?
Is it going to be solar?
Is it going to be nuclear?
And I think those are two sectors that are worth keeping your eyes on relative to that.
AI is here to stay.
It is the future, right?
We are going to be hanging out with the Jetsons.
We're not going to be hanging out with the Flintstones.
So just hop on board with George and his wife.
And finally, Peter, before I let you go, you and I will be here on Friday morning after that jobs report comes out, and that is a key report that we'll be paying attention to because it will also indicate the health of the labor market here in the US.
So ahead of that, what do you think are some key risks that we need to pay attention to, especially when it comes to the central bank?
You know what, look, I think it's really, really important.
We know that we closed out the year with 3 interest rate cuts.
We're in the middle of an interest rate cutting cycle.
We know that the president is going to install a more dovish man or woman into that job, and so that's important to watch.
But we do still, we have been trading a little bit blind about those economic data that we've not seen.
We still don't have a lot of the stuff coming out of September, October, November, and December.
And then there's a lot of the fresh numbers that are coming out, so we need to keep a close eye on what the jobs numbers are, unemployment numbers are, inflation numbers, because it's going to basically govern what the cuts look like in 2026 if we're going to have one or more, how does that look, and that will affect.
The market is in a huge way.
We know from what happened in November that the interest rate story is probably the preemptive story that is being watched by the large funds.
All it feels to me because we saw that the probability dropped down to 15%.
They sold the market hard when it went up to 88%, they bought the market hard.
So they are all in a very Interest rate sensitive positioning.
So I think that's probably the number one story right now is what's the economic data coming out?
How is that going to affect interest rates and the Fed's positioning, and how is that going to affect the overall market?
Well Peter, you and I will be dissecting those jobs numbers on Friday morning, so I look forward to that.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Happy trading.
