Horizon's Ladner on being 'uncomfortably comfortable' with the good times ahead

Chun Wang, senior analyst and portfolio manager at the Leuthold Group, says that the economy should perform well in 2026, with the mid-term election feeling more like a presidential election because fiscal and monetary policy should be aligned to prove something to voters, rather than the typical mid-term doldrums. Still, Wang believes that the wealth effect that has kept the economy out of a recession would be threatened by a market downturn, which means that a bear market would likely cause a recession. Wang says the near-term biggest macro risk is outside the U.S., most notably rising bond yields in Japan that, if they keep rising, "would cause a major disruption in this global risk rally."  Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, looks to small-caps this week, picking a Fidelity fund that takes a strategic, computer-driven, broadly diversified approach to the sector, providing moderately active management rather than the "significantly aggressive active management" that comes with a bottoms-up gunslinger picking stocks. In the Market Call, Jonathan Smucker, portfolio manager at Marietta Investment Partners, discusses his approach to stock picking, melding top-down macro analysis with thematic investing before finishing with a bottoms-up analysis to confirm his direction.

Scott Ladner, chief investment officer at Horizon Investments, says the market entered the year "with some pretty nice tailwinds all hitting at the same time," which has the economy set up for growth that he thinks will push the stock market to its fourth straight year of double-digit gains. Ladner recognizes that the market is enjoying current conditions, but he doesn't see major risks as being high-probability events this year, and instead finds his discomfort and nervousness in riding along with the consensus that conditions are so good. In the Book Interview, Danny Funt discusses "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling, which looks at the evolution of the gaming industry to the detriment of most people attracted to it, and the worrisome methods that the industry's power players are using to bleed sports gamblers dry. Jaime Seale discusses the Millennial Home Buyer Report for 2026 out from Clever Real Estate, which found that 40% of millennial home buyers say they 're desperate to buy a home this year, so much so that a high percentage of them would spend half or more of their monthly income on a home. That's bad financial math, which shows why so many feel the American Dream of home ownership is slipping away.

 Brian Levitt, global market strategist at Invesco, says he is watching but not worried about geopolitics, the interest rate environment and more because the current business cycle is strong enough to continue through the year. Levitt entered the year with a mindset of rebalancing and diversifying to take advantage of areas like international investments and small-caps that have been underweighted in portfolios, and he says foreign stocks should benefit all year from weaker dollar conditions. Dollar strength is one of four key market signals — corporate bond spreads, transportation stocks and inflation expectations are the others — that he is watching right now as gauges of continued market and economic strength. Brian Moody, executive editor at Kelley Blue Book, discusses price trends among new cars — elevated, but stable — used cars and what consumers can do in an effort to get better prices no matter what they are buying. He also discusses Chuck's recent search for and purchase of a new car, and talks briefly about what he drives and why. Lester Jones, chief economist for the National Beer Wholesalers Association, discusses how the January 2026 Beer Purchasers Index doesn't show an end to the "beer recession," he was seeing in the numbers last fall, but it does show that sales have started to pick up from levels that had gotten ugly. That resurgence — a forward- looking indicator since it measures the sale of beer that will be available to the public in several months — could be a sign that economic consumption could be up in 2026, a phenomenon not just limited to beer.

Talley Leger, chief market strategist at The Wealth Consulting Group, says the market is facing seven different headwinds, but that it has 10 tailwinds, all blowing to overcome potential troubles to where he expects the Standard & Poor's 500 to  reach 8,500 this year. That would make 2026 the fourth consecutive year with double-digit market gains, but Leger is confident in his pick, noting that easing financial conditions — including a few more rate cuts from the Federal Reserve — should support economic re-acceleration to let the rally roll on. Leger is not the only one who is optimistic, as the latest Business Conditions Survey, released today by the National Association for Business Conditions, showed that the nation's economists have mostly factored recession out of the picture for this year. While the economists do see potential overhangs from tariffs and other policies impacting business, they say that spending plans in their companies — but more broadly for the economy at large — should fuel continued growth. Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, is also optimistic for the future, coming off of the World Economic Summit at Davos — where he says the lesson was to keep watching geopolitics without over-reacting to them by overhauling your portfolio. Further, in "The Week That Is," he discusses how the market is reacting to feelings rather than fundamentals in the current earnings season, and how it's still not too late for investors to reconsider their commodities holdings, even after gold and silver popped again last week, with silver reaching fresh highs above $100. David Trainer, founder and president at New Constructs, puts five different technology stocks — including Magnificent Seven member Meta Platforms and tech giant Oracle — in "The Danger Zone," noting that they have troubling balance sheets that have created significantly misleading stock valuations, which he says will not hold up once the market recognizes the potential for trouble.  

Ted Benna, the father of the 401(k) -- who first recognized the potential in Section 401(k) of the tax code to boost retirement savings and who developed the first plan -- ax code, he recognized its potential and developed the first plan -- says that the Trump Administration's proposed plan to allow 401(k) savers to put some of their monies toward home down payments is a positive change that is overdue. He is not worried that the change will somehow endanger savers or widen the retirement crisis and notes that the change would make rules consistent across various types of tax-advantaged retirement accounts. Benna also discusses the Radish Plan, his new vision for how 401k plans can be used by employers to create incentives that boost employee-retention and productivity. John Cole Scott, president of CEF Advisors, reviews the key takeaways from his firm's fourth-quarter review of action in the closed-end fund industry, focusing on fund consolidation trends that have occurred in the middle of booming asset growth for the industry, as well as discount levels and whether narrowing discounts set up 2026 for more muted results.  A day after joining Chuck to discuss his new book "Your Perfect Portfolio: The Ultimate Guide to Using the World's Most Powerful Investment Strategies," Cullen Roche of the Discipline Funds puts his personal disciplines and preferred investment strategies to work talking ETFs in the Market Call.

Dominic Pappalardo, chief multi-asset strategist at Morningstar Wealth, discusses the firm's outlook for 2026, noting that the market has rewarded the sellers of artificial intelligence technologies, but at some point the buyers of AI technology will "need to show material gains from those investments" to justify the spending and maintain AI profits. As a result, he is cautious on artificial intelligence and technology stocks, but he is positive on the market and says he expects to see strong opportunities in small-cap stocks and international plays, particularly in emerging markets. Cullen Roche discusses his new book, "Your Perfect Portfolio: The Ultimate Guide to Using the World's Most Powerful Investment Strategies," which examines what it takes to apply some of the most famous investment strategies of all time to an individual investment portfolio, and what to expect for results. Roche, who is founder and chief investment officer of the Discipline Funds, also discusses why it is more important for investors to focus on "you" rather than on "perfect." Plus Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, revisits a fund that he made the ETF of the Week last year to give it the honor again. Repeats are rare in ETF of the Week history, but results alone might deserve it here; the fund he picked — tied to cryptocurrency — has had three stellar calendar years and is already up more than 33 percent for the first few weeks of 2026.  

Peter Chiappinelli, chief investment officer at Ballentine Partners says "When everyone is talking about a bubble, I sleep much, much better at night, because it means we're probably not in one." He makes the case that valuations are high — which could hold down potential earnings moving forward — but that they still justify the market action we have seen. He's cautiously optimistic that gains can continue, with his worry being the geopolitics, but he says the market has overcome plenty of exogenous shocks in recent years, and that recession risk is "almost nil" so that investors should expect volatility in which bad news is amplified but not turning conditions ugly. Laks Ganapathi, chief executive officer, at Unicus Research — an independent short-only research firm — makes her debut in the Market Call, discussing the disciplines of short-selling and whether a long stock market rally fueled by just a few companies has left her with an abundance of potentially lagging companies to choose from. Plus, Chuck talks about the changing life conditions — and then the monetary realities — that led him to make a big personal finance decision he never would have believed just a few weeks ago, replacing his old beater of a car with a new vehicle which he is leasing. Chuck's last new car purchase was nearly 40 years ago; he says that buying a used car to replace the old one made sense, until it didn't.

Alan Thomson, chief executive officer at Intervallum Technologies — which has developed a factor-rotation index based on evolving market conditions — says that the market's strong conditions are "durable," but that a "fragile" macro environment has created stresses. This makes for a "thin-ice state," where the market shows stability and could stay that way for the foreseeable future, but the underlying risks can not be ignored. He noted that should not put investors out of the market, but should instead have them aware that trouble is possible and to factor downside risk potential into their near-term outlook. Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, looks at the big start that the latest earnings season got off to last week thanks to some brand-name financial companies, and he talks about two companies that he thinks are must-watch news as earnings season transitions to more of the consumer and industrial names. He also discusses what he's looking for in companies from all industries to make sure they are staying on top of opportunities in the business world. David Trainer, founder and president at New Constructs, put five different stocks in the Danger Zone this week, noting that he expects them all to miss earnings estimates because Wall Street has been listening to whisper numbers or allowing legal accounting tricks to artificially inflate the numbers.  Plus, Chuck answers a listener's question about whether he can keep contributing to a Roth IRA now that he has retired.

Martin Pring, publisher of the InterMarket Review and chief investment strategist at Pring Turner Capital Group, says that "all measures of valuation ... are up in the stratosphere,"  which means the market is entering "a very dangerous period on a long-term basis." For now, however, Pring stressed that "trend trumps level," meaning that the valuations won't derail the market on their own, because the trend has remained to the upside. Still, he says that could happen soon, noting that the market has been climbing a big mountain during the current rally, but it is currently nearing "the death zone," where it runs out of oxygen. Ryan Kimmel, fixed income allocation strategist on the macro allocation team at DoubleLine, discusses the dilemma investors are in as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics faces challenges in producing monthly employment figures, noting that the issues are more about declining survey participation than they are any sort of politicization of the numbers. Kimmel says lower response rates force the statisticians to rely on "imputed data," which then requires bigger, more dramatic revisions, which can reduce public trust in the numbers. He notes that the key number he is watching will be initial jobless claims; he currently pegs the probability of recession at 30 to 50 percent, but says it would go significantly higher if initial jobless claim trends shift higher. Stephen Davis, closed-end fund product specialist at Nuveen, says that price returns exceeded net asset value (NAV) gains for closed-end funds in 2025, which means that discounts were narrowed. With those thinner discounts, it could be hard for that trend to continue in the new year. Still, Davis sees potential opportunities in municipal bond and senior loan funds in 2026.

Ben Cook, portfolio manager for the Hennessy Energy Transition Fund, says that the removal of Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro "will do little to change the global balance for the supply of crude oil" and says the situation is unlikely to have much price impact. He worries more about how tensions in Iran and the Middle East could impact markets if they take a turn for the worse. Cook also notes that government policies have changed investment prospects in classic energy companies compared to alternative energy developers and says he expects that trend to continue. With the stock market again flirting with record highs, Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, looks to an actively managed large-cap fund as his "ETF of the Week," saying that the T. Rowe Price U.S. Equity Research fund  can serve as an adjunct or replacement for a classic index fund in a portfolio, especially for investors hoping to gain an active edge. Chip Lupo discusses the latest credit-card debt survey from WalletHub.com, which showed that nearly 40 percent of consumers expect to have more credit-card debt at the end of the year than they have now, with roughly the same percentage of Americans feeling like they will carry credit debts for the rest of their lives. Plus, Chuck goes off the news on the request that the NCAA recently made to securities regulators to suspend "prediction markets," which are regulated differently from gambling — and are treated more like investments by law — but which have the potential to improperly influence outcomes, athletes and the investors/gamblers drawn to them.