Wall Street Breakfast Podcast: Three Forces That Defined 2025

Wall Street Breakfast 5.74M Follower s Subscribe 5 Share Save Comments Summary Big tech firms—GOOG, AMZN, MSFT, META—are ramping up AI-related CapEx into 2026. The current trade truce with China introduces uncertainty for 2026,. Analyst S&P 500 outlook: leading tech firms remain largely insulated from tariff risks, supporting a bullish S&P 500 stance. baona/iStock via Getty Images Listen below or on the go via Apple Podcasts and Spotify Consumer sentiment revised lower for December as year-ahead inflation expectation revised up a tick. Tech giants brace to spend billions more in CapEx as AI race heats up. 2026 S&P 500 Outlook : I'm The Lone Bull In The China Shop. This is an abridged transcript. 2025….has been a year. But don’t we say the same thing at the end of every year? Well, today we’re looking at the year as a whole and remembering three big topics that shaped 2025 and we’re peaking into 2026. Of course, this is a countdown so we’re starting off with number three. Vibecession… There’s this disconnect between the average person and how they feel about the economy and what the economic data says about the economy. That’s Jack Bowman with Bowman Capital Management on Seeking Alpha. One of the big major players in consumer sentiment, which is at an all time low and largely driven by this feeling that the economy is not as good as the data says it is. The most recent data shows The Consumer Price Index rose 2.7% Y/Y in November. Although it's very regionally dependent, right? Where I live in southern California our Y/Y inflation was 4.5% but someone in Dallas saw a 1.1%, way far off. According to the latest data, December consumer sentiment was revised down to 52.9 from the University of Michigan’s initial estimate of 53.3, though it improved from 51.0 in November. Gains in sentiment were concentrated among lower-income consumers, while sentiment among higher-income consumers remained steady. Meanwhile, year-ahead inflation expectations declined for a fourth straight month to 4.2%—the lowest level in 11 months—though still above the 3.3% recorded in January. So, what could potentially turn things around? One of the things I think will help is time, unfortunately. Number two is the one that you can probably count on being on everyone’s list. It has to be tariffs and liberation day was the most watched day in market history for the recent years. April 2, 2025 So, the rates we saw that day no longer matter. That famous image of President Trump with the big board with all the numbers on it, none of those are accurate to what it is now. But Jack admits sometimes things don’t play out the way you expect them to. Some of these were geopolitically useful but some of these I think were taken at face value right away. And I’m guilty of that too. When those numbers came out I said, “Oh no this is going to be really bad.” And since then I've tapered back a lot...

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