A measured approach is warranted. How I would plan this week’s trade This is typically a positioning and risk-management week, not an aggressive deployment window. Light net exposure: Maintain partial longs rather than full conviction trades. Liquidity thins quickly into year-end and price moves can exaggerate without confirmation. Favour leaders, not laggards: If participating, I would focus on stocks and indices already holding above key moving averages. Chasing beaten-down names rarely pays during Santa windows. Options bias: Call spreads or short-dated directional structures are preferable to outright equity exposure. Defined risk matters when liquidity is uneven. Cash is a position: Holding dry powder into the final two sessions of December often offers better risk-reward than forcing
Will gold reach US$5,000 in 2026? A move to US$5,000 in 2026 is ambitious but no longer implausible. After breaking US$4,500, gold has entered a regime shift rather than a cyclical rally. Key forces supporting a US$4,800 to US$5,200 tail scenario include: Monetary policy asymmetry: Even two Fed cuts in 2026 would still leave real rates vulnerable if growth slows faster than inflation. Gold responds more to the direction of policy than absolute levels. Central bank accumulation: Reserve diversification away from USD remains structural, not tactical. This creates a persistent bid under pullbacks. Geopolitical risk premium: Unlike past spikes, risk is now multi-polar and persistent rather than event-driven. Silver confirmation: Silver’s outperformance suggests this is a broad precious-metals
1. Will AI Continue as a Dominant Investment Theme in 2026? Strong consensus among major strategists and market outlooks suggests that AI will remain a central theme driving investment flows and economic growth into 2026. Economic Growth and Corporate Capex • Large financial institutions, including Bank of America, highlight that AI investment has meaningfully contributed to current US economic growth and is expected to continue growing in 2026, potentially becoming a more significant driver of productivity and capital spending next year. � • BlackRock’s outlook also points to AI capital expenditure supporting economic growth next year, at three times historical averages. � Market Strategy and Asset Allocation Views • Several brokerages and analysts believe AI will cement itself as a core
The Santa Claus window is statistically favourable, but tactically it still requires discipline. How to plan the week: Positioning over prediction: Liquidity is thinning, so price moves can be exaggerated. I would favour smaller sizing, tighter risk control, and trades aligned with existing trends rather than fresh thematic bets. Leadership matters: Watch whether market leadership broadens beyond a few mega-cap names. A healthy Santa rally typically shows participation from cyclicals and selected defensives, not just headline tech. Macro silence is a feature: With limited data and policy signals, sentiment and flows dominate. That tends to reward momentum, but punishes late, leveraged entries. Bullish on the Santa rally? Cautiously, yes. Seasonality, window dressing, and reduced selling pr
Over the next 12 months, gold’s trajectory is less about a single catalyst and more about policy credibility and regime risk. Key drivers: Real rates and policy confidence Gold responds less to nominal rates than to trust in central banks. If the Federal Reserve cuts into slowing growth while inflation remains sticky, real yields compress and gold stays bid. A credible hawkish pivot would cap upside, but that requires inflation to fall cleanly without economic stress, which remains uncertain. Fiscal dominance and debt optics Persistent deficits and rising refinancing needs in the U.S. and Europe continue to favour gold as a reserve hedge. This is structural, not cyclical. Geopolitics and reserve diversification Central bank buying remains robust, especially outside the West. This provides
The rebound following Micron’s results has clearly stabilised sentiment, but whether this is a clean buy-the-dip for Nvidia depends on time horizon. Fundamentals: Morgan Stanley’s stance is credible. The AI compute cycle remains capacity-constrained, not demand-constrained. Nvidia still sits at the centre of this ecosystem, with strong visibility on data-centre orders extending into 2026. On that basis, dips driven by positioning or sentiment rather than earnings deterioration remain attractive for medium-term investors. Near-term price action: After a sharp rebound, the risk tonight is a gap-up-and-sell-the-news session. Micron’s beat reduces downside tail risk, but it also gives short-term traders an excuse to lock in gains. Nvidia has already rallied meaningfully off recent lows, so ups
Is it Micron’s “Nvidia moment”? Not quite. Nvidia benefitted from platform dominance and software lock-in. Micron and peers are riding a structural upcycle driven by AI servers needing far more DRAM and HBM per rack. The gains are broad across the memory sector rather than company-specific. How long can the imbalance last? Likely 2 to 3 years. HBM capacity is tight, capex remains disciplined after prior busts, and AI demand keeps rising. Supply will expand, but not fast enough to quickly normalise pricing. Is it too late? Late for easy upside, not late for returns. Much optimism is priced in, so upside depends on sustained pricing power rather than multiple expansion. Risk is cyclical reversal once capacity catches up. Bottom line: this is a durable but cyclical memory supercycle. Still i
$Tiger Brokers(TIGR)$ Christmas, for me, is less about escape and more about recalibration. I deliberately scale back active trading during this period. Liquidity thins, price action becomes more sentiment-driven, and the risk–reward for short-term trades deteriorates. Rather than forcing activity, I treat the final stretch of the year as a time for review rather than execution. My usual approach is a light-monitoring mode. Key levels, macro headlines, and positioning risks stay on the radar, but there is no urge to react unless something genuinely breaks framework assumptions. It is a conscious shift from doing to observing. The more valuable work happens off-market. Reviewing what worked and what did not, stress-testing convictions, reassessing
2025 can be best understood as a year of violent repricing rather than simple trend continuation. The sharp April sell-off in US equities acted as a reset. Positioning had become one-sided, valuations complacent, and macro uncertainty underestimated. The subsequent rebound to record highs was not driven by fresh optimism, but by resilience. Earnings held up, liquidity remained ample, and investors were repeatedly forced to re-risk into strength rather than conviction. Gold breaking past USD 4,000 was arguably the most revealing signal of the year. It reflected not inflation panic, but deep-seated distrust. A hedge against fiscal expansion, geopolitical fragmentation, and long-term currency debasement. That gold and equities rallied together underscored a market hedging prosperity with prot
The rebound in Nvidia alongside Micron’s earnings beat reinforces a key point. The AI-led semiconductor cycle remains fundamentally intact rather than episodic. Morgan Stanley’s conviction is grounded in structure, not sentiment. AI compute demand is broadening from training into inference, enterprise deployment, sovereign AI and edge workloads. This sustains multi-year visibility for leaders such as Broadcom and Astera Labs, alongside Nvidia at the system level. Is this a buy-the-dip for Nvidia? From a medium-term perspective, yes, selectively. Pullbacks driven by positioning, profit-taking or macro noise do not alter Nvidia’s dominant role in AI accelerators, networking and software. Valuation is elevated, but earnings revision momentum remains supportive. Tonight’s price action: A gap-u