Now that 2026 has arrived, it’s time for our annual predictions column, where you tell us what you think will happen in the next 12 months. A few weeks ago, we brought to you the results of the 2025 crystal ball predictions we had made 12 months prior. As usual, some people were blindingly wrong, while others were impressively right.

Who could have guessed that the S&P 500 would have another strong year (three years running), who would have known that Bitcoin would blast through the $125,000 mark before crashing back to earth near the end of the year, and who could have predicted that gold and silver would be the stars of the show (both reaching record highs in December and both up 60%+ overall in 2025)?

Either way, it’s always fun predicting what’s to come and then look back at the end of the year and laugh at everything we didn’t know. After all, one of the mantras on this site that I’ve probably read a hundred times is: “My crystal ball is cloudy, but . . .” Well, forget all of that. Today, we’re going to peer into our crystal balls for 2026 just for the heck of it and see what emerges from the fog.

Entering the new year, investors are still riding high on the bullish stock market, though some are still worrying about an AI bubble that might pop at any second. The US economy (despite another recent interest rate cut by the Fed and despite inflation still staying somewhat under control) seems a little fragile—the unemployment rate continues to slowly rise—and you have to wonder how the issue of “affordability” will shape the mid-term elections next November.

And what I wrote last year at this time still seems to apply: “Even though the economy seems to be going great (at least for those who are high earners), some wonder if chaos is just around the corner.”

Now, let’s have some fun.

I’ve gathered predictions from some of our readers, writers, and other financial experts to make 2026 crystal ball predictions when it comes to finances, investing, or anything related to money. I didn’t care if the prediction was obvious or outlandish, funny or fiendish. I just wanted to know what people are prophesizing. After all, as James Clear wrote in his book Atomic Habits, “The human brain is a prediction machine.” And it’s fine if these prognosticators are wrong. As Ad-Rock of Beastie Boys once eloquently said, “Your crystal ball ain’t so crystal clear.”

At the end of the year, we’ll revisit this column and see if any of these predictions actually came true. For now, let’s look into the cloudiness of our crystal ball and see if we can find anything that’s remotely clear. Here’s what these predictors are predicting.

Financial Predictions for 2026

From Reader SC

  • AI stocks will continue to go crazy.
  • Housing prices will remain high.
  • Bitcoin will come back a little and finish the year at around $120,000.
  • S&P will rise once again but only about 8%-10%.
  • Profits for PE groups buying physician practices will decrease as they finally realize physicians are not interchangeable “medical providers.”

Banking Firm JP Morgan Chase

The S&P 500 will finish the year at 7,500. “The US is set to remain the world's growth engine,” the company wrote. It also expects the Fed to cut interest rates twice more in 2026 (it cut rates thrice in 2025). The S&P 500 ended 2025 at 6,845.

Housing Analyst Melody Wright

The housing market in the US will experience a price correction “worse than 2008,” and home prices could fall by 50%. Zillow said more than half of homes in the US lost value in 2025 (the highest percentage since 2012). In October, the median sale price of a home was about $440,000, only 1.2% higher year over year.

“What I’ve been seeing over the last three months, and this is—I get into the dirty, dirty details underneath the covers—that $100,000-$250,000 sales price, we are starting to see incremental increases in sales in that category,” Wright told Thoughtful Money. “And so as it continues, it will start to drag the median down. It’s happening already, and that’s where we’re seeing the deceleration.”

Real Estate Platform Redfin

On the other hand, Redfin says 2026 will “be a year-long period of gradual increases in home sales and normalization of prices as affordability gradually improves.” Redfin also predicted the 30-year fixed mortgage interest rate will hover around the 6.3% percent mark (near the end of 2025, it was about 6.1%) and that home sales would rise by 3% year over year.

From Commenter FloridaEDDoc

“Trillions and trillions will continue to be spent on AI capex, circular financing will continue, the market will go up and up for a while longer . . . and nothing much will come of it. Except for a few better/faster search engines, some IP copyright lawsuits, some weird music videos, and a million redundant AI chat apps that no one ever uses.

That’s about it. But it won’t cause MUCH of a market crash/correction, because the Mag 7 are already big money-makers. They’ll just pivot back to what they were doing before the AI bubble.

And the sci-fi community will stop making end-of-the-world AI movies.”

The Motley Fool’s Matt Frankel

Here’s what Frankel, a CFP®, wrote:

  • Mortgage rates will approach 5%.
  • The Russell 2000 will gain at least 20% (meaning small caps will do really well).
  • Walmart, Eli Lilly, JPMorgan Chase, and Visa will each hit $1 trillion in market cap.
  • AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic will have record-breaking IPOs.
  • Bitcoin will reach $150,000 (as of this writing, Bitcoin is at $90,000).

From Commenter Fruitful

  • I again predict no US recession, the same as I’ve been saying for the last few years.
  • As I predicted last year, I again predict the Ukraine-Russia war will continue unabated. The war will intensify, and Russia will make larger territorial gains than in any year since 2022.
  • The Fed will lower rates significantly. I predict at least four rate cuts (1% total or more). Despite this, mortgage rates will be relatively flat, and the 30-year will stay in the 5.5%-7.5% range all year.
  • Home prices nationally will decline, although the decrease will be small, in the 1%-2% range. Certain states in the South and West—such as Florida, Texas, Colorado, and California—may see 3%-5% decreases.
  • Last year, I said gold would outperform Bitcoin, which it massively did. For 2026, I predict Bitcoin will outperform gold.
  • I expect Israel to go to war with at least one country, likely Iran or Lebanon.

Deutsche Bank

The S&P 500 will increase by about 16% in 2026, landing at 8,000.

Investor Louis Navellier

As quoted by The Street, Navellier said, “2026 will go down in history as ‘economic nirvana’ where the US will be characterized by 5% GDP growth without any significant inflation.”

WCI Founder Dr. Jim Dahle

  • The US stock market will have its lowest return since 2022, but small value stocks will outperform large growth stocks.
  • International stocks will outperform US stocks.
  • Interest rates will drop slightly, boosting bond returns.
  • No major recession will occur.
  • Real estate will have its best returns since 2021.
  • The Democrats will retake the House of Representatives.
  • The Colorado Avalanche will win the Stanley Cup.
  • Bitcoin will finish 2026 above $100,000.
  • My men's hockey league team will not win any championships.

And as usual, you can feel free to ignore this guy:

Money Song of the Week

The Outsiders has been a treasure throughout the seasons of my life. I read the book when I was either in middle school or high school, and I’ve watched the movie probably, I don’t know, 15 times since I was a kid. I interviewed Ralph Macchio (Johnny Cade) several years ago at SXSW (it was, no question, a career highlight), and a few years before that, I interviewed the father of Matt Dillon (Dallas Winston) about his college golf coaching career.

Recently, my kids had to read SE Hinton’s seminal work for their schooling, and it just so happened that my local Broadway series included The Outsiders in this year’s season ticket plan. I wasn’t sure how the music and songs would work in this story I’ve grown up with and loved for so many years and have it not be a carbon copy of West Side Story, but I had heard that the Socs vs. Greasers brawl near the end of the play was phenomenal to watch (it certainly was).

In the song Great Expectations, Ponyboy—the main character who has lost both of his parents and who lives with his two older brothers—sings about his brother Darrel (who could have escaped his lower-class life and ridden to his own success if he wasn’t thrust into the role of Ponyboy’s parent by proxy) and his best friend Johnny (whose absentee parents basically leave him nowhere to turn). As Ponyboy, played by Brody Grant, sings,

“Darrel was on his way up in the world/Everyone knew he'd go far/Life came along, it had different plans/How quickly a dream falls apart.

Johnny has no kind of chance in this world/Not from where he's had to start/Who knows how far in this life he could go/If he played a different part . . .

Torn between what is and what could be/It's hard to write the story/When the story's writing me.”

It’s a song about privilege and the class system and about Ponyboy’s expectations for himself.

I honestly didn’t love some of the music from The Outsiders, but man, when that anthemic chorus hits in Great Expectations, it can become a real earworm. Maybe that’s what Johnny meant when he said, “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.”

More information here:

Every Money Song of the Week Ever Published

Tweet of the Week

High-level athletes, including successful race car drivers, are not immune to bad financial decisions. Here’s what Kyle Busch had to say recently.

What are your 2026 predictions? Do you agree with any of the above predictions? Or is everybody just simply wrong?