2026 Investing Forecast

Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:00
I think, I think the big thing with investing is risk reward. You know, how much are you willing to risk for your reward? What is the duration of their investment? What is the mindset for the investment? And that’s the big thing that we talk to clients about is where are you going to be comfortable with for the risk? Knowing these different factors that are out there. Not only do we have a stock market at all time highs, for the most part, you also need to ask yourself.

00:29
what else is going on around the world right now that may also hurt the market. Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Alex Nottingham, founder and CEO of All-Stars Dental Academy. And with me, the Detteli brothers, Julian and Baron. So happy to have you guys. Thanks for having me. Alex, thanks for not being on again. Yes, these are our star financial advisors over at All-Star. oh well, you’re with Oppenheimer, the Oppenheimer Group.

00:57
And you come to our events. We refer to you guys. Anybody has questions about, about investing? You are the ones to talk to you. You guys are such hard workers. You care so much and you’re very, very knowledgeable. When I get nervous, I know who to call. It’s you guys talk me off the ledge and we’re talking about 2026 investment outlook. So guys, give me a bit of just a um kind of summary of

01:26
2025, what happened in the markets? And, and then we’ll go into like, what do you expect to kind of lead into 2026? Yeah, I think 2025 Alex was definitely a year to remember when you look at it from January through the end of December, you really had a lot of roller coaster events during that time period. And obviously the biggest one being

01:54
hitting highs in February and then having the tariff war, let’s call it, start from mid-March through the beginning of April. You and you had a retracement of the S &P 500. I believe in February it was up 10 % or so on the year. And then in April it was down about 20, 22%. So you’re talking about a 30 %…

02:23
retrace on an index that you love, the S &P 500. And for those that don’t know what the S &P 500 is, can you define it? Yeah. And why do we use it as a benchmark? Right. So the S &P 500 is the largest 500 US companies. The S &P 500 is known as an index, and there’s three major indexes that the United States use as investment references. The Dow Jones.

02:53
the NASDAQ and the S &P 500. The S &P 500 has definitely become a more popular index to base your performance off of. In the past, it’s maybe been the Dow. For more aggressive clients or investors, it’s definitely looked at at the NASDAQ, but the S &P 500 is a blend of both, and it’s the general index that people base their performance.

03:22
and investments off of. Okay, good. I just want to make sure for those that are listening that they know we’re not into the weeds as much as we are, but they realize, okay, so this is the, this is when we say the market, it’s the S &P 500, the top 500 companies, and you’d like to be close to the market. I don’t know if it’s always, you guys tend to beat the market more often than not, but that’s rare. But if you can take what the market gives you over time, it’s pretty.

03:51
Pretty good. I actually have a sheet right here and I have to look at it from time to time the S &P 500 drawdown since 1990 I know Oppenheimer sends that out a lot you sent it to me and just a reminder that you’re gonna have these big drawdowns But they tend to come back this this idea of volatility and actually while on the subject it’s a bit of a tangent, but I You certainly did Summarize a bit of 2025 Well can I don’t know if you fit it will finish finish 2025

04:21
But I do want you to speak to at some point this idea of volatility because a lot of our clients and people I talk to, myself included, volatility is uncomfortable. So I like the gear a little bit about that. so tell me, so finish 2025. Yeah, I’ll finish 2025 and then Julian can go into the volatility part. 2025, you had April come, the market bottomed out. The administration basically changed their stance on tariffs.

04:49
And we saw some record breaking days in the stock market, a couple of days in a row, two consecutive days or three consecutive days to really turn around the market. Ever since then, we really experienced a lot of positivity. Deals were getting done, different things were loosening up when it came to tariff talks. And the biggest thing, and volatility, touch on it briefly, the market has volatility when there’s uncertainty.

05:18
when there’s a lot of uncertainty, which April brought to us, that’s when they’re selling. The more uncertainty, the more selling you’re gonna see, the more clarity that’s out there, the better chances the market’s gonna do well. As the year progressed, you started to see the Federal Reserve cut interest rates. We had a few interest rate cuts towards the back half of the year. We had a little bit more volatility in

05:45
December, we didn’t really experience that Santa Claus rally that people talk about as we go through the December time period. And then obviously, you know, we kicked it into 2026 here and, um, you know, obviously the market’s been going on for a month right now and more volatility, um, to say the least to start this year in, many different things, whether it’s been the stock market or we were talking prior about gold and silver and everything, you know, there’s been volatility all over the place and a gold.

06:14
Gold went up parabolic in the app. Besides being up 50 % last year, went up parabolic this year in January. And then it had a 10 % drawdown in one day, over 15 % over two days. And then it had a rebound a bit yesterday. And that’s historic. Gold has never done that. A buddy of mine was thinking there’s a lot of speculators that are starting to get in. They think gold’s a new Bitcoin, but gold has its own thing it’s doing.

06:43
So so Julia yeah, tell me just on that issue because I He was a lot people are so afraid of the market. It’s like that volatility uh Scares them obviously if there was no volatility I’ve heard then you wouldn’t have these type of returns so I remember meeting you and your dad for dinner in New York and Your dad’s like I love volatility like it doesn’t it he’s he’s like bring it on. So what what is what is it and

07:12
How should one look at it? So like Baron said, the market hates uncertainty. When you talk about who’s the market, it is everyone from retail investors into institutionals, quantitative traders. Anyone that you want to talk about is the market. Now, obviously you have Main Street investors and Wall Street investors. But when Apple is up today right now.

07:39
When Apple’s up, that’s retail investors that could be buying, that could be institutional investors that are buying. When there’s an increase in volatility, that is typically due to uncertainty. The market hates uncertainty. So like Baron said, back leading up to Liberation Day in April with President Trump in the Rose Garden, with the charts of uh every country with their tariff, you know, that was a ton of uncertainty.

08:07
And as the market bottomed, we started getting more ideas on what would come. The market also hates a lot of consumer uncertainty, whether we talk about the economy itself or individual companies, whether that is more consumer discretionary, like an Amazon or a Tesla, or just in general, financials is a huge dependent on individuals.

08:37
Gotcha. So the elephant in the room, think with going into this year is the AI bubble. They’re concerned about an AI bubble. mean, there’s actually two, two concerns that I would put out there too. Certainly the, the, the, market’s been rocking at all time highs and fueled by these AI firms and AI companies. Uh, if you look at, if you strip the AI companies and these big players,

09:05
The market is barely breaking even. It’s being pulled by data centers and all these types of things. So that’s going on. Plus gold was strong in 2024, big in 2025, starting again strong until even with the 15 % drawdown in January, it’s still up 13, 14 % for the year within a month. So what, what is the outlook? I mean, starting with, um,

09:35
the AI and maybe you can give some guidance about gold and silver, but as a diversifier and what do you see? So what do you see with that and what’s going on with this AI concern? So as far as the AI bubble goes, it is not our opinion that we are in any AI bubble. Certainly there’s names that are a lot more risky than other names. Whether you talk about Microsoft can be an AI name.

10:04
Amazon has the world’s largest cloud business, AWS, Google with their Gemini 3, Apple is also an AI name that people like to discount. So when you’re looking at the conglomerates, we don’t consider them being in an AI bubble. Are there a lot of younger and smaller companies that are a lot more leveraged and risky? The answer is yes. But when people try to compare

10:32
the technology and the AI bubble of 2026 to the tech bubble in 2001. We’re considering this night and day because it’s just not a similar scenario. So, so what? Yeah. I mean, with the, with the tech, they were just so excited about websites and these things. there was anything, anything with a.com. I’ve had money thousands percent.

11:01
And you’re serious some of that with if you put AI in the situation, you might get some some capital. I know open some scary things about open AI, like it’s not been pro not even close to proper profitable. And the issue is that you have Gemini and you have Google, you Google’s Gemini and others that just baked in it free. Uh, Amazon Alexa is it’s like, it’s becoming just incorporated. why would I pay big money?

11:29
when AI is just becoming out like candy. Right. So there’s all different things that these different tech companies do. Like you said, OpenAI is not profitable. The MAG-7 really add a few names, so call it a MAG-10. Their capital expenditures will be $400 to $500 billion. Metta, who reported earnings the other day, today’s February 4th, they reported last week.

11:58
Metta’s capital expenditures they’re estimating for 2026 will be between $110 billion and $135 billion. That is a ton of money, but Metta is also an extremely profitable company. They’re not. Right. There’s a lot of companies that are going to massive levels of debt to try to grow.

12:24
a company like Meta or Google or Apple or Amazon, they have profit margins and they have hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue to counteract those expenditures. Gotcha. Gotcha. So, so maybe there’s not like a bubble like 2000, um, but valuations are all time highs for these companies, multiples. And certainly there’s a lot of money being putting into it and nothing, as you guys know, nothing is exact.

12:54
Right? Nothing is, it’s always overestimating. You know, the market bakes it all in, right? Price to perfection. That if one thing breaks, right, you see if earnings are good, but not to where we thought it would be, or you start having where these data centers, I heard this called dark GPUs, where they’re not being used. You have so much data centers that the demand isn’t there. Plus the fact that the amount of energy we need to supply it, we just can’t do it. um

13:24
So there might be some sort of correction, maybe not a bubble. Do you see that as a possibility? What are your thoughts on that? Like you said, Alex, know, the market and individual stocks, they are priced to perfection. um And like you said, if a company misses earnings by a smidge or whatever it may be, you know, they get beaten up pretty good. You know, when you look at a company like Microsoft,

13:51
They just had their earnings last week as well. They missed on their Azore, which is their cloud, and the stock came down, I believe it was $300 billion they took off the market cap, or a miss, a very slight miss. I believe they missed by like a half of a percent or something like that on their cloud. So again, you do have those situations, and then obviously it’s opposite situations where you have better than expected.

14:20
expectations and then the stock goes up higher. um know, and the saying in the financial industry is always buy the rumors, sell the news. So, you know, people and investors can get excited going into an earnings report, expecting the best. And if the earnings aren’t up to those standards, they sell the news. So, you know, I definitely think that there’s opportunity out here for, you know, future.

14:49
further growth, but there’s also going to be, to your point about earlier with the S &P 500 declining, we’re going to see that seven to 10 pullback, seven to 10 % pullback eventually. At some point. What’s interesting though, the last month, a dog, the SCHD, which is hailed as the greatest dividend ETF broad market out there has been terrible for the last year or two. It’s up like 10 % in like two months because

15:19
people are starting to get worried and go into value. guess what I heard is whether we’re in a bubble or not, the deal is is that there’s still money to be made. so, know, timing the market, a great quote, right? Better time in the market is better than timing the market. So just making sure you’re getting those gains that you can absorb some sort of pullback.

15:43
At some sort and there might be a black swan which for those who don’t know something that we’ve got haven’t artist anticipated that can happen But that’s why guys like you are diversifying into different in different situations so let’s shift to I want to shift to gold for a second and silver a diversification and and then I want to talk a little bit about recession, maybe they’re you can take them either order, but What do you want to talk about now because I’m thinking about?

16:10
I know, do want to talk about gold and silver or go into recession? Yeah, let’s talk about gold and silver. So first off, you just said, everyone likes gold, but especially around your neck. So like you said, gold has had an amazing few year return, especially in 2025 and to start 2026. Silver has done even more phenomenal.

16:40
Silver in January of 25 was mid $20 range an ounce got up to a hundred and fifteen hundred and twenty dollars an ounce and then on Friday January 30th it Dropped almost like a lead balloon, you know silver per ounce was down in the 70s Yeah, and that was one of the largest single-day drops of silver in its history

17:08
There’s a lot that goes into why something like that goes up or goes down. We view silver more as a commodity than a precious metal. The metals themselves, gold and silver, are definitely inflationary pieces, which is concerning for inflation. But whether it’s your phone, it’s your computer, it’s your car, there’s silver in that. So where do we see

17:37
Gold and silver going in the future? It’s definitely an uncertain question. The average, and I saw a poll this morning, the average analyst on Wall Street has gold staying in the upper 4,000 range for the next two years, and they have silver staying in the upper $70 range to low $80 range for the next year or two. So there has been great returns in the last several years.

18:04
Just like with the market, sometimes the market staying flat instead of going down is the best thing that it could do. And if gold and silver do the same thing for the next year or two, that’s not the worst thing to happen. just, just over the last 20 years, gold total returns is higher than the S and P 500 for the last 20 years and total returns. I mean, it was, it was, they were about at about

18:32
They switched about 2020. saw gold overtake the S and P. Uh, then the S and P blew up, uh, in, a couple of years and then, and gold was flat and then it, you know, just shot right, you know, and I think what you’re saying is interesting. So part of what happened in January, what I was told is, um, is that there’s a lot of speculation and gold and silver. And so there was some corrections, some, some margin.

19:01
uh, calls and things are going on. is stuff that you understand that this is over the head of this podcast, but there’s some speculation going into gold now and, and, and silver because it’s just so hot. But I think the point that we were talking about in the green room is that the reason to have gold in particular silver is like a sister. Um, gold is, is used as a currency, a world currency, and it is a hedge against the dollar.

19:29
It is a hedge against inflation. had a buddy, one of our mastermind members at All-Star did a presentation at a mastermind group and talked about gold. And it was really cool what he said. He said, if you had a handful, let’s just say of these golden eagles, which are these tokens of gold, I don’t know how many they were. Let’s just say 12, okay? 12 golden eagles could buy you a house 30 years ago. Those same golden eagles, 12, can buy you the same house.

19:58
this time, even though the house tripled in value. Because the point is that gold is not making you money per se. It is holding value. It’s an inflation hedge, right? So it absorbs inflation and crisis and uncertainty. Something happens politically bad in the US. The dollar gets crushed or something happens. Gold’s gonna go up. People don’t trust the dollar as much. Gold’s going up. Bonds prices go up and the values go down.

20:28
So there’s a lot of, and this is what you guys are so great at, is making sure that your investors are diversified, right? The S &P 500 in stocks are the money makers. These are companies delivering value, making money. uh Gold is an inflation hedge. Bonds are you’re getting debt from the government or something. It’s a uh safer way, like you do the bond split and some cash. I remember at the end of 2024, you said to me, says, Alex,

20:56
I don’t know how you said before the tariffs. You said to hold a little cash. We’ve been on a big rally. Just hold a little bit because you want an opportunity to buy and you were spot on. I took some cash because you said and I, and that’s great. That’s what’s important of having uh great financial advisors that can kind of say, look, this is what we’re thinking. I know you guys are, are even though you, you know, you take some nice investments, you still are very conscious of protecting.

21:24
people’s wealth, protect first. think, and I think the big thing Alex was investing is risk reward. Yeah. You know, how much are you willing to risk for your reward? Right. And, know, at times like that, back in 2024, even now, you know, with the market at high levels, you know, how much is a person willing to risk for the reward? You know, what is the duration of their investment? What is the mindset for the investment? And, you know, that’s the big thing that we talked to.

21:54
clients about is where are you going to be comfortable with for the risk, knowing these different factors that are out there with the reward, right? Not only do we have the stock market at all time highs for the most part, you also need to ask yourself what else is going on around the world right now that may also hurt the market. Well, like you said, if one of these AI companies don’t perform well,

22:22
They’re going to drag every involved down. And it’s just, it could have different.

22:30
Situations that just affect one another today you have AMD reported their earnings yesterday after the bell They missed slightly down $40 today, but not only is AMD down you have microns down $40 and the video is down $6 right now presently Broadcom is down $15. It’s a chain reaction. Oh, I’ll down 17 % Oh, yeah, so yeah

22:56
You look at the chain reaction and that’s the big thing with this market, you know, and it goes up together for the most part and the same securities in the industry go down together and that’s the scary part when someone looks at the screen and sees, like you said, down 15%, down 20%. You don’t feel good about that, know. PayPal was down 20 % yesterday. You know, so there’s a lot of companies out there that, again, if you don’t perform,

23:25
the market’s really gonna stick it to them and that’s kind of what the environment we’re in right now and it’s scary. And I find it’s, you guys studied this stuff. Like I have this rule, if you don’t understand it, don’t invest in it. You gotta have people that know what they’re doing. know, like I had a buddy of mine, I told her to buy some gold. I said, just buy and hold it. It’s a good inflation hedge. She bought it, then when it went down 10%, she sold it.

23:54
You’re not a hard part about, you know, that’s the hard part about investing and can talk about the success that you have and you know, everyone has, like think about a person that bought something yesterday and they woke up today and is down 15%. You know, are you going to hold it right now? It’s a lot easier said than done. you know, you look at why we have our jobs and you know, the roles we’re in is, you know, not only to set clients up for the longer term, but it’s also to kind of.

24:22
mentally talk them through situations and kind of be therapist at the of center owner meeting or a table or zoom or whatever it may be. So that’s a big part of everything. would think that’s probably one of the biggest. mean, unless you’re, you’re trying to time these stocks, like you understand and you, well, but you re you research them and you’re right. You can’t time them, but you can see whether it’s good investment long-term.

24:48
But if you just look at the S and P or the NASDAQ over, over the lifetime, even with the huge drawdowns, you know, it wins. So if you just buy it and hold it, you’re going to win, uh, and diversify appropriately. You’d hope. But the, but the problem is psychology. It’s can you, it’s easy. I saw my goal position go up huge and I saw a drop. It’s so easy. We love when things go up and it’s exciting, but can you, can you take it when they go down?

25:18
And that’s why we work with a lot of All-Star Dental Academy clients with cash management, um capitalizing on safe money that they want for the business. The amount of people we’ve talked to that have a good amount of money sitting in a bank account earning nothing, we’ve changed that around. And the big thing is really capitalizing on what is being invested and how long

25:46
can this money be invested for? We really don’t want to invest any money if a client has an under six month timeframe. It’s just impossible because you don’t know what’s going to Well, I like what I’m hearing. what I’m hearing, this is critical when it comes from a financial investor to learn, how you, how even more important to what you’re buying is how you are allotting your capital.

26:15
You need enough number one dentist. It’s your business. That’s what makes your money. These guys are here to protect your money. You were not, we’re not going into the slot machine and gambling. I know you’ll throw in a few fun stocks just to kind of keep it fun, but you’re not here to pull the slot slot and hope you hit it big on. They can go the other way. It is we are protecting money. So obviously as from what I know from you guys is we talk a lot is it’s

26:43
You know, the how much cash you’re not opposed to cash making some making interest. Then there’s a certain level of bonds, right? Getting debt. You’re taking on debt from the government, whatever to get paid. And then there’s also the 401k efficiencies, tax efficiencies. There’s like a lot of stuff that has to be done, um, that are like free money or stupid, like, you know, with a low risk. And then you add on the, the, the ETFs you add on.

27:10
certain stock picks and one of the I know you’re very popular is the tax locks harvesting indexing direct indexing where you can uh You know where you’re getting gains, which are also taking on short-term losses To be able to write those off Which are pretty cool stuff. There’s a lot of things you me a little house. What do you so last question I have for you What what do you think about a recession? Are we at risk?

27:36
of a recession and if so, what would that look like and how would you protect clients from that or during that? as far as are we going into a recession, we don’t believe so. Job numbers is including numbers that came out this morning. They’re still popular. Unemployment is still low, relatively low and

28:00
The vast majority of the economy is healthy. Are things more expensive today than they were a few years ago? The answer is yes. But are people making more money today than they did three years ago? The answer is also yes. So do we see a recession in 2026? Our answer is no. Wall Street in general has very low expectations of a potential recession in 2026. And

28:27
We also still see a lot of positivity in this market and the economy in the famous words of Warren Buffett, never bet against America. And you think about it too, you know, you have us GDP growth, you know, I think numbers were between 2.3 to 2.6%. Um, you’re going to have a new fed chair in may, um, which all signals are.

28:56
that they’re going to be loosening interest rates and maybe reducing that further. And, you know, that’s all things that do help the economy and the environment we’re in. You know, as long as it’s done properly, you know, we don’t want to see a knee jerk reaction in May where there’s a large cut and then that sends us in the opposite direction.

29:21
You know, and that’s going to be the big thing when it comes to the recession risk and also our economy in general. Um, the one thing I would say is, is if we start seeing the labor marketing market softening, you know, that could maybe throw up some red flags. Um, but I would say that the recession lit risk overall right now is, is lower, definitely under 30%. What would you do? And this is the mark of a great financial advisor.

29:50
What would you do if we do hit a recession? How do you, would you take care of your clients during that? really depends on who the client is, what’s their outlook, what’s their need for money and just a lot of individualized conversations with that client to see what they need. No two people are alike, just how no two people have the same fingerprints. So it really depends on each individual person.

30:18
and where they are in life and obviously financials as well to see what the best thing would be for them. Got it. So what times are not is to do nothing, you know, do nothing. Um, you know, and we focus on high quality companies and high quality investments where, you know, we feel strong in owning those companies through, through those times potentially. Um, and a philosophy that we have is.

30:47
We may lighten up and come out of positions that we don’t have as much conviction in and put that money or capital into companies that are also down that we think will come back the strongest. know, Google was at $140 last April and today Google’s at $332 today. Wow. It’s amazing. That’s a name that we were looking at in April. And again, there’s obviously net

31:17
Not everything works like that, but that’s the type of investments and companies we’re looking into doing. You have to be confident. You have to be very confident on what you’re doing. Just as a dentist has to be confident in going in a patient’s mouth. We have to be very confident and our clients need to be confident in us to do the right thing for them. We’re not speculators. We’re investors. And when someone is investing money,

31:45
whether it’s by yourself or through a financial advisor, you need to make sure that the two of you are on the same page when doing that.

31:54
That’s a beautiful line. I’m going to end with that. love that. Not where investors, speculators, Julian and Eric. And with this Alex and with this, you would up top your brother. Okay. Let’s go. He’s the older brother. It’s 2026. Let’s wrap this up here. The general estimates on the S and P 500 right now are between nine to 12 % growth.

32:20
this year on the S &P 500. For reference, the S &P 500 right now is at 6,900. Oppenheimer has an $8,100 price target on the S &P 500. It’s the largest and the highest on Wall Street, which would represent a 17 % growth from here. Again, that could always be updated higher or lower, but at least as of now, that’s our beginning year estimate.

32:46
As as other firms are between 9 to 12 percent. So again, it would be another good year We’ve had three in a row. We’re looking for a four pete And I think it’s definitely at least for now looking to be that way. So I end on that one Okay, the big brother big brother baron Thank you guys for being on the program julian baron natalia and For our all-star members and for all-star followers definitely reach out to these these guys

33:16
that will make sure that information is available or just reach out to us. We’ll connect you to them personally. also what I love about you all is you’re happy just to share and talk. You guys aren’t else people. You just talk investment stuff. You love it. And I think that’s just awesome. That’s why our clients love you and that’s why we love working with you. So thanks for being on. I’m sure we’ll hear more from you throughout the year of how things are going. Hopefully it’s just fun uh investment stuff and not

33:46
not some unforeseen thing, which there probably will be. And then we’ll talk about that and you’ll put our, there’s an ease. Remember everyone follow us on Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, get the episodes as they are released, share with your friends. And until next time, go out there and be an all star.