Our Annual Magic 8 Ball Predictions for 2026 (SB1788)

It’s that time of year when we look ahead, squint confidently into the future, and pretend we have any idea what’s coming next. In this annual Stacking Benjamins tradition, Joe Saul-Sehy welcomes back Mindy Jensen from the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, Len Penzo of LenPenzo.com, and OG for the predictions episode that blends money talk, pop culture, and just enough nonsense to keep everyone honest.

Instead of pretending anyone can forecast the markets, the crew leans into what really matters: how to think about uncertainty. With help from a Magic 8 Ball (clearly the most reliable forecasting tool available), the panel throws out bold guesses about stocks, crypto, AI, inflation, interest rates, and the kinds of headlines that will dominate conversations in 2026. Some predictions are financial. Some are cultural. Some are optimistic, let’s say.

But beneath the fun is a useful reminder for Stackers. Predictions don’t build wealth, process does. This episode isn’t about acting on guesses. It’s about stress-testing assumptions, questioning narratives, and remembering that long-term success comes from good habits, not crystal balls. If you’ve ever wondered how much attention to pay to forecasts (and how much to ignore), this conversation delivers clarity wrapped in entertainment.

And yes, there are sports predictions, celebrity guesses, and enough wild speculation to guarantee at least a few laughs when we look back a year from now.

In This Episode You’ll Hear:

The crew’s biggest financial and cultural predictions for 2026
What the Magic 8 Ball “thinks” about markets, rates, and inflation
Why forecasts are fun but dangerous if taken too seriously
Thoughts on AI, energy use, and how technology may affect daily life
Predictions about crypto, gold, and the stories investors love to chase
A reminder of what matters when markets surprise everyone
Sports, pop culture, and wildly specific guesses that will age somehow

Join the Conversation:

Which prediction do you think has the best chance of being right, and which one will age the worst? Share your take in Spotify comments or the Basement Facebook group so we can revisit it next year and keep receipts.

This episode is a reminder that while nobody knows what 2026 will bring, Stackers who stay curious, flexible, and grounded tend to do just fine. Magic 8 Ball or not.

Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201

Enjoy!

Our Topic: Magic 8-Ball predictions for 2026

During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:

Magic Eight Ball recap
Live 2026 kickoff
Prior-year predictions
Prediction scoring format
Kardashian show status
Macy’s bankruptcy fear
Retail spending strength
Tariff talk
Stock market highs
Index fund simplicity
Mortgage rate drop
Fed rate cuts
Headlines versus reality
Hurricanes and insurance
Rising insurance costs
Dow 50,000 target
Silver price surge
College choice outcome
Drone sightings explained
Drone delivery future
Bitcoin versus gold
Crypto use case doubts
Berkshire share price
Swift Kelce engagement
Lions Super Bowl hope

Our Contributors

A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.

Mindy Jensen

Another thanks to Mindy Jensen for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Mindy on her show, BiggerPockets Money at BiggerPockets Money Podcast – Podcast – Apple Podcasts.

Len Penzo

Thanks to Len Penzo for joining us and providing the Magic 8-ball. You can learn more about Len at his award-winning blog Len Penzo dot Com – The offbeat personal finance blog for responsible people.

Grab your copy of Len’s recently released book, True Money Stories: Madcap Musings About Family Life and Personal Finance

OG

For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.

Join Us on Monday!

Tune in on Monday when we tackle the assumptions people make when building their money plan.

Miss our last show? Check it out here: Making Time for What Matters with Laura Vanderkam (SB1787).

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] opener: Hello there. Peabody here, and this is the way back machine. We’re traveling through time and this is my boy

[00:00:08] Joe: she

[00:00:08] opener: speak. Chairman. Hello, good boy.

[00:00:16] opener: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:00:30] opener: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. What events are going to shape 2026? You know how to find out. You head to Walmart and you buy a Magic eight ball. That’s how. So how did our eight ball fare last year? What’s on our minds for 2026? We’ll look back at the Yearend review and peek ahead with our round table panelists today.

[00:00:50] opener: And now a guy who’s wearing his swami hat and ready to predict the future. It’s Joe Saul Sea. Hi.

[00:01:01] Joe: Welcome to our first live recording of 2026. I am Joe Saul Sea. Hi, welcome. Let me be the first to welcome you to the first Friday episode of the New Year. And if you’re new here, the thing we do right up front before anything else is we look into. The crystal ball and we say what’s gonna happen in the following year.

[00:01:23] Joe: And last year our magic eight ball had pretty decent year. We’re gonna see if it can continue. Its great ways this year. Let’s introduce you to the people that are gonna help us out. First of all, you already said hello to neighbor Doug, but the guy across the card table from me is Mr. Og. How are you, man?

[00:01:39] OG: Uh, ready to hit the ground running?

[00:01:42] Joe: Yes. You’re ready to roll on the Fridays all stretched out. Got your predictions ready? Uh, I’m working on ’em. Waiting to have them manifest. Are you gonna predict that a Michigan football coach won’t go to jail this year?

[00:01:56] opener: Ooh,

[00:01:56] Joe: no. I’m not predicting that. Why? Why do you gotta be that way?

[00:01:59] opener: Why? Why

[00:02:00] Joe: You gotta be like that girl. She’s gotta start the new year with the friendly rivalry across the state. And the person who’s not across the state, she’s halfway across the country. Mindy Jensen from BiggerPockets Money’s here. How are you

[00:02:12] Mindy: Joe? I am fantastic. It’s lovely to see you. I love your blue glasses.

[00:02:17] Joe: Well, thank you. I love your pink microphone. Thanks. We got good stuff happening. So, for the three people that don’t know about BiggerPockets Money, tell everybody what you and Scott do over there.

[00:02:27] Mindy: Scott and I talk about money. We talk about, we both shut up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really we talk about the journey to financial independence and what you do when you get on the other side.

[00:02:38] Joe: Super fun show. And you guys, by the way, are like, um, I don’t know, just the, just the teamwork between the two of you. Fantastic. But knowing both of you independently as well, Mindy. You guys get along so well and you could not be more different.

[00:02:55] Mindy: We really couldn’t, and that is kind of why we get along so well.

[00:02:58] Mindy: I’m not trying to step on his toes with oh, but I know that too. And he’s not trying to step on mine. We just get along really, really well because we have such different perspectives because we from such different backgrounds.

[00:03:08] Joe: It is a super partnership and we’ll link to BiggerPockets money in the show notes and the guy who, you know, we don’t have a crystal ball and we didn’t have any other thing.

[00:03:18] Joe: This guy brings the magic to the first show every year. Mr. Zos here. How are you brother? I’m

[00:03:25] Len: doing well. Thank you very much. New Year’s, good to see. 2026, finally here. 2025 I thought was kind of a rough one, but, uh, nice to see. 2026 come in.

[00:03:36] Joe: Well, some good stuff happened. I mean, you had a full year retirement, Len.

[00:03:40] Len: I did. Now my first one, not my Fritz, my second full year. That’s your second full year of time. Full year. Yeah. It’s been, it was great.

[00:03:46] Joe: See? Time. Time flies. It goes fast. Thought, thought it was like, uh, 18 months ago, but it’s been longer than that. It’s been a while. Yeah, it’s

[00:03:54] Len: been a while. But doing good. I’m looking forward to this.

[00:03:57] Len: I think we’re gonna have fun. And I, and I really am anxious to see how the eight Ball did last year, so we’ll see. Yeah. So

[00:04:03] Joe: let me ask you a couple questions. The magic eight ball feeling good. It’s been, uh, fed and watered and ready to roll today. Ready to rock?

[00:04:10] Len: Uh, I’ll, I’ll be honest, I haven’t taken it for a test run today, so we’ll see.

[00:04:14] Len: It’s gonna, do you wanna give it a quick test question?

[00:04:17] Joe: Uh, uh uh, Mindy, do you have a test question? Uh, like one that we already know the answer to? Oh,

[00:04:24] Len: yes. That’s good. Yeah, that’s real. That’s a good one. Something we know the answer to, so we’ll know. Yes. If it’s ready to rock, roll on on the Money.

[00:04:31] OG: Is OG drinking red wine?

[00:04:34] Len: That’ll work. Yeah. That’s a great

[00:04:36] Mindy: one.

[00:04:36] Len: Was OG drinking red wine?

[00:04:44] 8ball: It’s a certainty.

[00:04:46] Len: There we go. We’re on the money. She’s tuned up.

[00:04:48] Joe: All right, so that is the truth. In just a moment, we’re gonna see how well the Magic Eight Ball did on Mindy’s lens and OGs predictions last year. Then in the second half of the show, we’re gonna make new predictions for 2026. What do we hope the future holds?

[00:05:06] Joe: You’re about to find out first. We have a couple sponsors help us. Keep on keeping on. We’re gonna hear from them, and then we’ll see how the Magic Eight Ball did last year.

[00:05:18] Joe: All right. Let’s go back in the time machine and see where we started off last year. We actually started off with a fun one. Most of our questions are about money, but of course we could start off 2025 about money. We had to start off with this

[00:05:34] Mindy: in keeping up with Paula’s, asking about the royals. I am going to go with American royalty.

[00:05:39] Mindy: Will keeping up with the Kardashians finally be canceled?

[00:05:45] Joe: This is so important to our financial future. This is important to our financial future, Mindy, and I’m glad you asked it. ’cause what a way to start off. 2025 was asking that important question.

[00:05:54] Mindy: Yes. I don’t actually know if they got canceled though.

[00:05:57] Joe: Well, here is the answer. The Kardashian Jenner family came back with season seven starting on October 23rd of this year. So the answer is no, they did not get canceled. But that’s not, we, you know, we don’t really care if they got canceled. We care if the Magic eight ball thought that it get canceled or not.

[00:06:18] Joe: So let’s see if the eight ball got that one right.

[00:06:25] 8ball: The answer is yes.

[00:06:28] Joe: Oh, your, oh, you’re head. Oh. So the Magic eight ball starts off Oh, for one. But that means that we can put our rally caps on, right? It

[00:06:36] Len: can, it can only get better from here. Right. It’s gonna

[00:06:39] Joe: be fantastic. Alright, so where do we go from there? Well, we had a question, our first question about money, and it was this one magic

[00:06:49] Len: eight ball.

[00:06:50] Len: Will Macy’s declare bankruptcy in 2025 Macy’s? Yes. Wow.

[00:06:56] Joe: Now what we were worried about Len, we were worried, of course at the time. I think you were worried about the fact that retail just having a difficult time and Macy’s kind of not struggling at the end of last year.

[00:07:07] Len: Yes, that’s exactly right. But I think they’re still around, right?

[00:07:10] Len: I just, I watched the parade. Yes. So they’re still here.

[00:07:14] Joe: At least the parade is here. The good news though, everybody, is that Macy’s is still around, so that is good news. But the question is, did the eight ball think it was still around and here’s what the eight ball had to say.

[00:07:32] Joe: Yes. The answer is absolutely yes. I don’t think that surprises you, Len, that the eight ball said

[00:07:39] Len: yes. Well, I’m, I’m disappointed because I know we’re already, that’s going way out there. The eight ball’s, really? Uh, he’s,

[00:07:45] Joe: he’s, well, the eight ball did go way out there,

[00:07:48] Len: as you said

[00:07:49] Joe: last year.

[00:07:50] Len: You know how baseball is the Mendoza line and baseball batters hitting 200, under 200.

[00:07:55] Len: He is in the, I’m afraid here that the Mendoza line for the, uh, for the eight ball is, is 500. I mean, if he’s, if he ends up batting under 500, you know, we we’re better off flipping a coin, right? So I, I’m a little getting a little worried here. We’re headed for the, uh, eight balls version of the Mendoza line.

[00:08:12] Joe: We still got, we got 12 questions left. It’s over two, but that doesn’t mean that it’s gonna end, end poorly. You know what’s funny, guys, is we predicted last year, well, we didn’t predict, but our discussion last year was around the fact that. We thought that retail might continue to struggle, especially with the tariffs.

[00:08:28] Joe: And yet what we saw was not that at all. Retail numbers were recording this actually a little early during the holiday season. Retail numbers were expected to be higher, they were expected to grow at a more modest pace than they did last year. But generally, OG retail has been okay. People are out there still spending money.

[00:08:48] Joe: Og

[00:08:49] OG: uh, yeah, I don’t have any, uh, facts on this, so I don’t know if that’s true or not, but, uh, it sure seems anecdotally that nobody’s really concerned about anything.

[00:08:58] Len: You know what? I think it is, I think a lot of it has to do with the stock market. I mean, the stock market I’ve been doing very well this year.

[00:09:04] Len: I think it’s, you know, we’re in mid-December and it’s

[00:09:06] OG: another all time high, Lynn.

[00:09:07] Len: I think that NASDAQ’s at 20% for the year. I think the Dow and, uh, the s and p are over, you know, between 10 and 15%. I, and you know, when your portfolio’s up, maybe you, uh, you know, you feel better about spending.

[00:09:19] Joe: Why does it always surprise people, Mindy, that the stock market’s at all time highs when really that’s kind of the way it’s designed, that it’s gonna hit all time highs, you know, hopefully most years.

[00:09:29] Mindy: Yeah. Well, people are surprised because when the stock market is down, it’s a huge news story. The Dow lost 15 points today. Well, what does 15 points mean? It’s, it’s really not that much. But if you don’t know anything about the stock market, then you could think that that was a lot. So I think there’s a lot of people who are listening to the headlines and not diving deep.

[00:09:47] Joe: It’s so frustrating that, um, I don’t know. I remember when I first watched CNBC and I was just lost. I felt like they were speaking a different language. And it turns out the good news is, Len, we didn’t even need to learn that language.

[00:10:02] Len: Index funds solve everything. I mean, just, uh, all you need to know is index funds. Really.

[00:10:07] Joe: I know. I thought it was gonna open up this whole cool new world and yet it did not. All right, what do we have next? The next question up came from OG and it was this one.

[00:10:20] OG: Well, we were talking about, uh, mortgage rates before and I’m just gonna steal this one from Mindy so she doesn’t get it.

[00:10:28] OG: So, uh, 30 year mortgage rates right now, about seven and a quarter as we record it today, my question is, will we find 30 year rates? So the normal 30 year mortgage rate, will it be below six and a half at the end of this year,

[00:10:42] Joe: 30 year mortgage rate below 30 year

[00:10:44] OG: mortgage rates down

[00:10:45] Joe: 75 bips. As the cool kids say, and it’s funny, I’m gonna stop it right there because it turns out that, uh, we did get lower interest rates og.

[00:10:54] Joe: Mm-hmm. What, four

[00:10:57] OG: times? I think something like that. It was, it was a wild year, but I don’t know that the most recent one’s been factored into the market yet.

[00:11:02] Mindy: It’s factored in before it even gets announced that it’s being cut. Mm-hmm.

[00:11:07] OG: Meaning to say that when you see it on the news, don’t expect to see a radical change the next day.

[00:11:12] Joe: So they dropped a long way og, what was our final look? Did it reach six and a quarter? Uh, it seems to be right at the buzzer. Yep. On October 24th, we had 6.13. So, and frankly, at the time that we record this, it’s a little above 6.25, but it’s been hovering right around. So the answer is, it did reach it though by December 1st.

[00:11:33] Joe: So the answer is yes. What did the eight ball say?

[00:11:40] 8ball: The answer is

[00:11:42] Mindy: no. Oh my God. Well, oh and three, just like the Chiefs started off this year. It’s, and,

[00:11:47] Joe: and sadly, Mindy, the Chiefs really, really didn’t rebound either. Sadly,

[00:11:52] Mindy: they did not rebound If you are a chief fan. Sad, this is, uh, not your favorite season.

[00:11:56] Joe: No, it is not. And, uh, that must, you’re, that’s spoken like a Chiefs fan.

[00:12:00] Joe: You a, you a Chiefs fan.

[00:12:02] Mindy: I watch football games. My husband roots for the Bears, so I like to watch a team where the quarterback actually throws to somebody who catches it on purpose. So I will watch the Chiefs, I will watch the Patriots. The Bears actually

[00:12:15] Joe: having a good year this year. They’re kicking everyone’s butt.

[00:12:17] Joe: You

[00:12:17] Mindy: know, I’m super excited that the Bears are having such a good year, but you wouldn’t think that they’re having such a good year to hear my husband screaming at the tv because they don’t, they don’t play like a good team. They just happen to win. He,

[00:12:29] opener: I was gonna say, because he knows they’re gonna lose in the first round of the playoffs.

[00:12:32] Mindy: Well, he might not know that, but

[00:12:34] Len: he’s still hoping they get a first round by Dougie.

[00:12:37] Mindy: Everybody’s hoping they get a first round

[00:12:39] opener: by,

[00:12:39] Mindy: they’ll,

[00:12:39] opener: they’ll, they’ll lose in, which ensures that they’re gonna lose their first game in the playoffs even more.

[00:12:45] Mindy: Yes. That’s actually one of my predictions. Let’s go to the fourth one.

[00:12:50] Len: Wait a minute, wait a minute. So just to be clear, is, is the eight ball O for three now? The eight ball is now O and

[00:12:54] Joe: three.

[00:12:55] Len: Okay. Very good.

[00:12:57] Joe: Len, we’re having a, not a great year. No. So far this isn’t good, but there’s nine to go.

[00:13:01] Len: So, yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.

[00:13:02] Joe: The only way is up as they say. Let’s see what’s next.

[00:13:08] Joe: Uh, this last year, you know, some disturbing devastation from hurricanes. And Vincent asked a question that’s unlike one that we’ve asked here before. He said the official hurricane season is considered over on December 1st. So in 2025, Len, will the Atlantic Basin produce 15 or more named storms and or strike the continental US with three or more named storms.

[00:13:35] Joe: That’s what he wants to know. We definitely hope that answers no. And what’s funny is some people might be asking, what does it have to do with money? Well, you know, the last couple of years we’ve seen, especially in the Southeast, uh, homeowners prices go up. Of course there’s areas by you, Mindy, where homeowners prices also have gone through the roof because of fires l by you because of fires and well, heck, you had a fire on the hill behind your house.

[00:13:58] Joe: Yeah,

[00:13:58] Len: you know what? And it’s not just homeowners, it’s auto insurance too. It’s just crazy insurance. I, I, I just saw a survey. Most people, of all the things that they’re worried about, price increases, it’s not food, groceries, fuel, it’s insurance. That’s people’s most item that has impacted them the most in 2025 is rising insurance costs.

[00:14:17] Joe: In 2026, healthcare, yes,

[00:14:21] Mindy: but congratulations to all the insurance companies on their record profit years. This year,

[00:14:27] Joe: it’s a win for somebody. Yes, someone looking at the Southeast, remember this time last year, uh, Asheville, North Carolina really on our minds, right? Because who would’ve thought that hurricane would’ve, uh, hit there?

[00:14:39] Joe: So the question was, would 15 named storms, uh, happen, or three plus strike the United States? The Atlantic Basin produced 13 named storms. So the answer was, thank goodness, no, that didn’t happen. And for the first time in a decade, not one struck the US this season. As far as the US is concerned, it was a good year.

[00:15:01] Joe: Of course, Jamaica’s feeling a little differently than the US mainland is right now, but we didn’t have any hit. So the answer here is no. What did the eight ball say?

[00:15:16] 8ball: Definitely. Yes.

[00:15:18] Joe: Oh, that’s not good. Oh my God,

[00:15:22] Len: this is embarrassing.

[00:15:25] Mindy: That Magic Eight Ball is following your 2008 Lions Joe. Yes,

[00:15:32] Joe: the eight ball’s been talking to James Franklin over at Penn State

[00:15:37] Joe: for non-sports fans. Oh my Lord. James Franklin got fired partway through this year. ’cause that team was supposed to be doing really well, OG and could win nothing. So not the world’s best year.

[00:15:48] OG: Alright, we go to the Shade Throne from

[00:15:50] Joe: the

[00:15:50] OG: Michigan State fan. That’s fun.

[00:15:53] Joe: Michigan State had a great year. We improved our football team.

[00:15:58] Joe: We fired our coach as well. But let’s move on, shall we?

[00:16:05] Joe: Yes. All right. Question number

[00:16:07] Mindy: five. I don’t wanna do any more doom and gloom because that’s not very fun. So let’s talk about the stock market. Will the Dow close above 50,000 by December 1st? 2025.

[00:16:23] Joe: Wow. Well, before you ask it, Len, let’s talk about where the Dow Jones Industrial average is today. Where are we at today, Mindy?

[00:16:31] Mindy: I believe we are at 42,000 today. 42528.36 at this very

[00:16:38] Joe: 42,000 and change. Mindy and the stock market had a very good year.

[00:16:43] Mindy: It had a very good year, but I don’t see, I don’t see that we touched 50,000. I see. We got super close. We didn’t actually touch it.

[00:16:53] Joe: Nope. We made it to 48,254. So from 42,000 to change though to 48,000.

[00:17:00] Joe: Not a, not a bad year. OG. Pretty good year for the stock market.

[00:17:04] OG: I have no idea. I didn’t have any idea what the Dow was at when, when I heard Mindy say 50,000, I was like, what the hell is she on? And so I was looking it up when you were playing it. Uh, ’cause I, I think about it, the s and p, but if you asked me to guess, I would’ve probably said we were in the 30,000 range or 25.

[00:17:23] OG: But do you remember, what’s the lowest number you remember on the Dow? Like as an adult?

[00:17:28] opener: Probably in the twenties. Oh, Mindy. Oh my God. Way below that. Don’t act like you’re that young. Mindy. No way. 600. No, I was gonna say you don’t remember 600. I was thinking like 1800, 400 ish.

[00:17:40] OG: You don’t remember four? That was in the seventies, bro.

[00:17:43] OG: Nine, 400. It was 400 in the Greek depression. I started the Dow

[00:17:46] Mindy: 1986. It was 1700.

[00:17:48] OG: I know those numbers. I’m asking what you remember.

[00:17:50] Mindy: I remember like 20,000. I was in high school in 1986. I remember a book called Dow 20,000.

[00:17:56] Len: Yeah. I remember people wearing those Dow 10,000 hats. 10,000. That’s, I remember the, the pictures of the people wearing the hats.

[00:18:03] OG: The big 10,000. Yeah. I, I remember six. Like I have a memory of six. Anyway, that’s crazy.

[00:18:11] Joe: So we did not reach it. We did have a good year. We did not reach, it wasn’t the banner year. Were you, when you said 50,000, Mindy, where did that come from? Did you, were you hoping it was gonna be just the doors blown off year because of ai or what were, what was going on in your mind?

[00:18:27] Mindy: Oh, one year ago I was not thinking about AI at all. We had had such a big run. I mean, if you look at the historical returns of the dao, it is like up and to the right at this angle. It’s not flat, it’s not just slightly, it’s really, really angled. Sharply, uh, what is that, a 45 degree angle? Yeah. So I just assumed that it would go plus 50 thousand’s, a nice round number.

[00:18:50] Mindy: If I had known, I would’ve been like, it’s gonna be 48,416,

[00:18:55] Joe: but still so, so, so close. It made it so what a good year. Let’s see if the, uh, eight ball, the correct answer here was no, it did not reach 50, even though it had a good year.

[00:19:09] 8ball: Yes. It’s certain,

[00:19:11] Mindy: it’s certain,

[00:19:12] 8ball: it’s certain.

[00:19:14] Len: This is pathetic.

[00:19:17] Mindy: The eight ball and the 2008 lions. Neck and neck, I guess down.

[00:19:22] Len: So let’s just be clear. We’re o for five or oh for six. We are o for five. Okay. Holy cow. This is all turning into the Jim Kramer of predictive balls, isn’t it?

[00:19:35] Joe: Yeah.

[00:19:35] Len: Not good.

[00:19:36] Joe: All right.

[00:19:36] Joe: Uh, hopefully we rally here from oh and five. Yeah, we, we could still finish one. We need to win

[00:19:41] OG: out to be 50 50, huh?

[00:19:44] Len: We, no, we can win out and be above right. We questions? We’d

[00:19:46] Joe: seven and five. Still we could be seven and five. So let’s see what’s on tap next.

[00:19:51] Len: Of course, I’ve gotta do a precious metals question, right?

[00:19:54] Len: Let’s shift over from gold. Let’s go to silver this year. I wanna know if silver. Will it get to $40 by December 1st? $40.

[00:20:04] Joe: Oh, that’d be a nice thing. I, I remember we had now a silver expert, uh, David Moron and David had this great quote, I love Len that said that silver will frustrate you just a little longer than you’ll have money.

[00:20:17] Joe: And I, and I wasn’t wrong there, Len, that silver will frustrate you. But if you were holding on to silver this year, silver and gold baby.

[00:20:26] Len: Yeah, you got it. Silver’s up over a hundred percent this year and gold’s up like 70%. So yeah, it’s been a good year. It’s been a very good year.

[00:20:35] Joe: So the answer is yes, and these questions were all before December 1st, it hit 56 45.

[00:20:43] Joe: So way above way, way, way above the $40 number that Len you were looking for. So the answer is yes. What’d the eight ball say?

[00:20:55] 8ball: Without hesitation. Yes.

[00:20:58] Joe: Oh, it’s finally, finally woke up. Hallelujah. After being asleep for the first, uh, 30 minutes of today Show it decides. It decides. Yes. It actually is going to pretend that it has, uh, something good going on. I’m sure we’re gonna expect another one from you, Len, coming up. All right, og.

[00:21:21] OG: I have a high school senior this year who has four months left in his high school career, and, uh, a lot of questions about where he is gonna go to college. Has a lot of different options, but I’m curious if he’ll get into his number one school. So, will my son? What? What’s so funny?

[00:21:40] Joe: Nothing, I’m, I’m just thinking a good financial question.

[00:21:43] Joe: It is a good financial question for you.

[00:21:45] OG: Absolutely. Yeah,

[00:21:46] Joe: because you wanna know how much you owe. How much do I owe magic? April, how screwed am I?

[00:21:53] OG: Right. Will my son next year, on December 1st be enrolled at the University of Michigan?

[00:22:01] Joe: All right, there’s the question. And og, what’s the answer to that question?

[00:22:05] Joe: A year later,

[00:22:07] OG: he’s very happily enrolled at Texas a and m

[00:22:09] Joe: at Texas a and m. He’s an Aggie, not a Wolverine,

[00:22:13] OG: another good

[00:22:13] Len: football school

[00:22:15] OG: this year.

[00:22:15] Joe: Good year for football for a and m also, uh, happier Wallet. Og. Uh, yeah. Yeah, A little bit. Mm-hmm. In state. Overall. Good stuff. All right, so the answer is no. He was not at the University of Michigan.

[00:22:28] Joe: What’d the eight ball say?

[00:22:33] 8ball: It’s a certainty.

[00:22:38] Len: We’re back on top track. I feel like

[00:22:40] OG: we should just write these down and then just score it out and just be like, Hey guys, so the eight ball was one for 11. Um, so there we go. Get, let’s just do our own from now on.

[00:22:52] Joe: Nice to know you. No predictions. I love to look back at the last year, but the eight ball this year is incredibly painful.

[00:23:01] Joe: Hopefully, hopefully it secures this dignity by running the table end.

[00:23:06] Len: It’s dignity. It’s my dignity too. You know, I told you, this is like a, a child of mine. You know, I’m, I’m, I’m like looking at a kid up on stage, uh, on talent night, not doing so hot.

[00:23:16] Joe: This is a blast from the past. Remember, we were worried about this.

[00:23:21] OG: Here’s a better one. Will we have identified what all the drones are flying over all these random cities by this time, December 1st.

[00:23:29] Joe: It’s funny to look back. A year ago I even forgot og that was a thing. Like I, I’m like, oh, drones. I totally forgot there was such a thing as drones.

[00:23:39] OG: I don’t know what’s going on in y’all’s world with this, but it’s not exactly at our house.

[00:23:44] OG: But our, our friend who lives about mile or two North, they can do ice cream, drone delivery at their house. Oh. It just gets it. And you just wait and it has a little tracker, like we’re just a little too far south of the station or whatever. And like, you just see it on the map and it just like, and then you hear it goes and then it like lowers this basket right to your yard.

[00:24:07] OG: You take your stuff off, you wave and they go and take off again. What utopia do you live in? It’s so quick that it’s, it’s ice cream. Like, it’s like, you know, you’d say, well, ice cream, I mean, it’s gotta melt or whatever. I mean, they, it’s in a freezer container, you know, so it’s gonna stay somewhat cold, but it’s.

[00:24:25] OG: I wouldn’t trust DoorDash with ice cream. Right, right. Like you wouldn’t get like a frosty from Wendy’s on DoorDash even though it’s fast and whatever. It’s a wave of the future. What, say you about drones there, Lenny?

[00:24:37] Len: Well, Joshie, the last job I had before I retired, I was, I was testing drone propellers and these were humongous propellers.

[00:24:46] Len: I still don’t know if I can say what company this is for, but everybody knows what the company is. They are planning on using drones to deliver some very, very big items in the future. And I don’t think it’s very far away like missiles, it’s gonna be, you’re, you’re gonna be shocked at what these companies are gonna be delivering.

[00:25:02] OG: Deliver bombs to bad

[00:25:04] Len: guys. Ka boom. It’s gonna be wild. When you see this,

[00:25:10] Joe: are you saying, oh gee, we all know that it’s Northrop Grumman. Just think we can deliver these, uh, these fighter jets. Fantastic. All right. The answer actually we have, uh, from a, b, C News. The answer is yes, of course. We identified that all the, the drones, various things going on, but the answer was, it was nothing nefarious.

[00:25:32] Joe: There were no aliens attacking.

[00:25:35] Len: It was not, yep. What was it, because I kind of forgot about the whole story. What, what was it?

[00:25:40] Joe: It was a host of different things. There were tests going on, companies testing drones, especially in New Jersey. Along with that, as the news started coming out, enthusiasts just started putting drones in the air just to, just to f with people, just to pile on mess even more.

[00:25:56] Joe: But it all did start with some companies testing drone ability in New Jersey. So the answer is, will we have identified what the drones were? Yes. Did the eight ball say Yes?

[00:26:13] 8ball: Everything points to yes.

[00:26:15] Len: Well, there we are. Two in a row. Yeah. But, but I, I wanna point out that, well, two for three. The original question, if we would’ve stuck with Josh’s original question, which was, will you be above 50%? He would’ve been wrong.

[00:26:29] Joe: So you’re saying the problem is ours, that we don’t change our questions.

[00:26:33] Joe: That’s exactly right. It’s a question

[00:26:34] Len: problem, actually. It’s just the que that we’re asking the wrong questions.

[00:26:37] Joe: That’s right. Stuff we should have asked. Other questions? Duh. Uh, let’s move on to the next round, and we’re gonna go toward, we, we can’t do this without crypto. Let’s do then, uh, the next one from our friends in mom’s basement.

[00:26:55] Joe: And I really like this one because heck, this year we had gold up so much as we talked about, and we also had Bitcoin up a lot. This is a fantastic question from Aaron On that very point, will Bitcoin outperform gold before December 1st of next year? So Bitcoin began the year fairly well. Mindy, you follow Bitcoin?

[00:27:17] Joe: Not at all. Zero Len. Yeah, I track it. Yeah.

[00:27:21] Len: So Bitcoin versus gold this year. Not even close. It’s not even close. I mean, it’s just, it’s gold’s blown, blew it out of the waters. Matter fact, I think Bitcoin is down here in, we’re mid December, it’s down on the year. Bitcoin is,

[00:27:34] Joe: Bitcoin started off strong and then really struggled, really, really struggled throughout, uh, 2025.

[00:27:39] Joe: So the answer then is no, Bitcoin would not outperform gold. And by the way, uh, you guys, Mindy recently did a story about crypto, didn’t you? Did you guys just do a, do an episode on crypto? No, we did a crypto episode a while ago. Maybe it was just Scott online talking about crypto and about how he just still doesn’t get the fact there’s not much use case yet there.

[00:28:03] Joe: There should be more use case than there is, and the fact that it feels to him more and more like a Ponzi scheme.

[00:28:10] Mindy: Yeah. Well, and that is one of the best performing videos that we have on our site.

[00:28:15] Len: Well, I watched it. I’ve been saying that, and I’m biased, but I, I’ve been saying that for years, that it’s, it’s a highly speculative asset.

[00:28:21] Len: That’s what it is. And it’s masquerading as a monetary system, safe haven, as opposed, and what it’s doing and what it has been doing for a long time, you’ll notice it’s mirroring a lot of, most of the time it mirrors the nasdaq, it acts like a tech stock. So if the NASDAQ’s down, bitcoin’s down, if NASDAQ’s up Bitcoin goes up, they track each other fairly closely, especially in the last year or so.

[00:28:41] Len: That’s how I treat it. It’s treated as a tech stock.

[00:28:44] Joe: Well, it’s funny, og, I mean, you look at Bitcoin and people talk about it as a quote, store of value. Not only is it not a store of value, the volatility is, I, I mean, can’t even really think about it as a diversifier in your portfolio.

[00:28:55] OG: It’s under the same context, I would think, although Len would disagree with his precious metals as a store of value, it’s wildly volatile.

[00:29:03] OG: And so on a day-to-day basis, it’s almost unusable in that context. I think the jury’s still allowed as to whether or not in 20 years from now it behaves like gold or silver in the sense that over that long time horizon, it, it does become a little bit more, uh, realistic to, to hold onto value as time goes on.

[00:29:25] Joe: This is the first year I’ve heard people ask since crypto’s come out, uh, reputable people saying, is crypto really gonna be around 15 years from now? Like, is it going to even survive? Let’s put on our magic eight ball hats. Uh, Len, do you think crypto’s gonna survive 15 years?

[00:29:44] Len: Um, I’m sure there’ll be crypto coins around there.

[00:29:47] Len: There might even be a, uh, you know, like what they call the digital US version of the US dollar that the central bank might put out the Fed,

[00:29:54] Joe: but I think that’s something different. I think US digital currency. Is a different thing, different beast.

[00:30:00] Len: Well, I, you know, it, it all depends. I, like I said, people can create these, these things.

[00:30:04] Len: Anybody, you and I could create our own cryptocurrency tomorrow if we wanted to. I wonder why we didn’t, you know, there’s just so many of I know. No kidding. Yeah, but I, I’m, there’s just so many of ’em. So I, I, I’m loathed to to say that they’ll never be around. But as, I don’t think Bitcoin will be, you know, the phenomenon that it has been in the last 10 years.

[00:30:22] Len: I think it’s gonna, I think it’s going the other direction. One of my, one of the people I love to follow a macro analysts, Luke Romo, one of the best ones out there. He was pro Bitcoin for a long, long time. And, and the two of us used to go back and forth on Twitter quite a bit, debating it. And he’s only now just come around in my view.

[00:30:40] Len: I mean, he’s even admitted that he now thinks he was wrong and he believes that Bitcoin is not, not what it was all cracked up to be. So, and that that was a big admission for him. So I think the attitudes are changing a little bit.

[00:30:52] Joe: Mindy, do you think it’ll survive 15 years? Do you remember

[00:30:55] Mindy: flus. No, Whoopi Goldberg was, it was a way to pay online, and Whoopi Goldberg was their spokesperson.

[00:31:05] Mindy: I really like commercials, so I remember these commercials. Um, I pay attention to commercials more than maybe other people do, but I looked up flus to talk about it. They went outta business in, uh, 2001, and then at the bottom it says, see also beans digital currency, internet cash.com, virtual currency vouchers.

[00:31:23] Mindy: Bitcoin. I am not a fan of Bitcoin. I don’t understand it. I am definitely not asking anybody to explain it to me. I just, I think that it’s fluff. I, and please email Joe. But will it

[00:31:36] Joe: last 15 years is the question? Not is it gonna, is it anything, do you think it’s gonna be an opportunity show? Yeah. I don’t,

[00:31:42] Mindy: I, well, it hasn’t been anything for so long.

[00:31:45] Mindy: When will it suddenly turn into something? I do think it’ll still be around in 15 years, but I think it’ll be even less relevant than it is right now.

[00:31:53] Len: I wish I’d invested 10 years ago, you know, bought 10 or 20 coins. Oh yeah, boy, that that’s the, that’s just looking back. What an idiot that was. But you know, that’s the way it goes.

[00:32:01] Mindy: Oh gee asked when did I first, what do I remember the Dow being? What was the first price you heard of Bitcoin? I heard of it at like 6,000 back when Greece was having their financial meltdown and people I was falling was Bucks. People using it. What?

[00:32:15] Len: 10 bucks I could, you know, I had an idiot. But hindsight’s 2020, I mean

[00:32:19] Mindy: for 10 bucks maybe.

[00:32:20] Mindy: The

[00:32:20] OG: thing though, Lynn, is that it’s fun to go back and look at that stuff. ’cause you could also do the same thing with Apple or Nvidia or Amazon or Google or any stock that’s gone up really high. The reality is, is that you also have to have had gone into a coma for the last 10 years. Because there’s no way with a highly speculative thing like Bitcoin is that you would’ve invested pick a number.

[00:32:45] OG: Oh, I should have put 10,000 in. Right. There’s no way that you would’ve watched that go to 20 down to two. Yes, that’s right. Up to a hundred and gone. Exactly. Yolo baby, let’s go. Exactly. And then watch it go to 50 and then 500 and then back to 75 and then a million and not get out. Like somewhere in there you would’ve been like, oh my God, I can’t believe this thing’s back to 500 K amount.

[00:33:08] Len: When it got to six, I think it was 16,000. I dunno why that number sticks in my head when it got to that. I was like, this is crazy. And even then, if you got in, then you’d have. Five times your money. You know, it’s just, but it’s hard to tell assuming that

[00:33:19] OG: you kept it the whole time. Exactly. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:33:21] OG: You have to have the stomach and never did anything different and never panicked out. And I really wish my mom would’ve taken all my college money and dumped it an Apple stock also. Sure. Or, you know, I would’ve been smart enough to, I mean, do something as simple as put $166 and 67 cents a month in my Roth when it first came out in 1997, because I didn’t have that money.

[00:33:41] OG: And I was like, I don’t have it. So whatever. It’ll be fine. It’ll work out. You know, I’d be, have, I’d have more money doing that than any bitcoin, you know, scheme. So the answer to your question, Joe, is it will be around, I think just the limited, uh, the limited supply of it makes it somewhat interesting.

[00:33:57] OG: Although, I did see a thing the other day about, uh, it was on Fortune, Forbes. It wasn’t a meme, but it was basically a cover of all of the covers that they’ve put on one of these magazines. And I think maybe it was Forbes and it had like. Who was the guy from Ft X that Sam Alman Fried? Yes.

[00:34:16] Len: Sam Friedman or Sam?

[00:34:18] Joe: Sam Freed Samuel Bankman Freedman Bankman

[00:34:21] Len: Freed. Yeah.

[00:34:21] OG: That’s, say Sam Altman’s an open AI guy, so it’s not him.

[00:34:26] Joe: And we’re getting sued.

[00:34:27] OG: Well, whatever. Anyway, so the guy from FF TX was on one, the gal that like had the blood thing that she scammed a bunch of people out of. Oh, Theranos. She was on one. And, um, there was another one that I thought was interesting.

[00:34:41] OG: And then the last one that they showed was the guy from, um, Michael Sailor, the guy from, um, MicroStrategy. It couldn’t have been more interesting in what they’ve done to their company. But anyways, all that to say, I suspect that it’s still around and I suspect that it works a lot like any other. Limited resource investment at that point.

[00:35:00] OG: That’s what I think.

[00:35:02] Joe: Well, so the answer is, uh, well, Bitcoin outperformed gold. The answer was no by a long shot. Let’s see if, uh, well, it’s gotta run the table, Lynn, at this point to be 500

[00:35:18] 8ball: everything points to Yes.

[00:35:20] Joe: So this is cool because in my notes I had that it got it wrong, but I didn’t notice that I changed the question. The second time here led we changed the question, we turned it around, and, uh, because of that, Mr. Predictor gets it right.

[00:35:33] Len: You know, it works out because the previous question change worked against the eight ball.

[00:35:38] Len: So this one worked for the eight ball, so it all evened out.

[00:35:40] Joe: Yeah, that is fantastic. All right, we have just a couple more to go. Let’s see what’s up next,

[00:35:47] Mindy: Mindy, let’s get your last one. Okay. So way back when. A hundred years ago, in 1990, I was in college and I was taking a business class. This was back when you had to get the stock prices on the newspaper because the internet either didn’t exist or I didn’t have it.

[00:36:05] Mindy: Yeah,

[00:36:05] Joe: I do those before my client meetings. By the way, I go in and find out the closing price of the day before and take out my calculator and figure it out for clients. Yeah. Remember,

[00:36:13] Mindy: so in the business class, we were supposed to pick one stock at the beginning of the year and just follow it. People were, you know, they had their favorite or whatever, and I just went like this.

[00:36:22] Mindy: It stuck my finger out and I landed on Berkshire Hathaway and I was like, this is really expensive. Is that for one share of stock? And I wanna say it was like $20,000, but maybe I’m way wrong. Because I don’t remember what the price was. I just remember that it was this, it was

[00:36:37] Joe: still a lot. Yeah.

[00:36:38] Mindy: Yeah.

[00:36:38] Mindy: Everything else was like $12 and this is 20,000. Like, it, it had this giant space in the, the tiny little MD was

[00:36:44] Len: 20,007 eighths, if you remember.

[00:36:46] Mindy: Yeah. Okay. So it was 20,000. I do remember that. Right. So if I would’ve bought a share back then, uh, it would’ve taken all my money. I wanna know if Berkshire Hathaway A shares, because they have said split into a and b shares, will a shares hit $950,000 a share by December 1st.

[00:37:07] Mindy: And for,

[00:37:07] Joe: for just again, for people that don’t follow it, where’s the trading at as we record this? Mindy?

[00:37:12] Mindy: It is a high of $724,000 in November.

[00:37:18] Joe: All right. So, uh, that’s a great question, Mindy, and I love the, let’s just track Berkshire Hathaway for a year, especially this year. When does it make you sad that Warren Buffett is retiring here?

[00:37:29] Joe: Uh, that just retired.

[00:37:31] Mindy: Honestly, I talk about financial independence and early retirement, and Warren is like a little bit past the early retirement portion of my audience, so I’m glad he’s gonna be able to finally enjoy himself. You don’t think it’s a little early? No, I think he’ll be okay

[00:37:48] Len: if he lives to 120, I guess you could call it early retirement.

[00:37:51] Len: So it’s possible

[00:37:54] Joe: if OG retires at 90, he plans on living past 120, so that’d be a nice long 30 retirement one. Yeah. The question was, is it gonna get to 9 50, 900 $50,000? The answer is back on May 2nd. It actually hit 812,855. So that was, uh, the high that we reached in, uh, 2025.

[00:38:17] Len: Isn’t it down this year?

[00:38:19] Len: Isn’t it like a, a fluke year for that stock? Isn’t it down?

[00:38:22] Joe: I think so. It’s at just above 800,000 now, so it’s. It has continued to have a little bit of a struggle. I wonder if people are worried about the changeover.

[00:38:30] Len: I thought for a while there it was definitely down or it was it, which is, you know, very strange for that stock.

[00:38:36] Mindy: April 1st it was 800,000. April 4th it was 742,000. So that’s a pretty big drop. It got all the way down to 694,000 in August.

[00:38:48] Len: Yeah. Yeah. I remember it had a six handle on it. Yes.

[00:38:50] Joe: And then roll back really has had a nice, uh, rebound but still down. So if your dollar cost averaging in during that downturn, yeah.

[00:38:59] Joe: It could have been a decent year for you, right? Yeah. So the answer is no, it didn’t reach it. What did the eight ball say?

[00:39:09] 8ball: Yes, it’s certain

[00:39:11] Joe: cha and there goes our 50. There goes our 500 year.

[00:39:16] Len: We’re out of the playoffs.

[00:39:18] Mindy: Just

[00:39:18] Joe: like the

[00:39:19] Mindy: Chiefs.

[00:39:19] Len: Just like the Chiefs. We’ve

[00:39:20] Joe: just been eliminated. Or the Cowboys or the Raiders. All right, so we need a, uh, fun question. We got one right here. Alright, Len, you are up to bat my friend.

[00:39:32] Len: I’m gonna go with a kind of a, a fun one.

[00:39:34] Len: Uh, if you don’t mind, Joe Taylor Swift. Still big news and all that. Still, even though here turn of 2025. I wanna know if, uh, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are gonna get engaged by December 1st.

[00:39:46] Joe: And the other question is then if they do get engaged, do we, do we stop getting every four minutes of my football game?

[00:39:51] Joe: Taylor Swift’s, I guess. Exactly. Uh, the answer is I haven’t, I haven’t seen, because the Chiefs are not that great. This year we did not see a lot of Taylor Swift. At least I didn’t on national TV as much. But the, the news, I don’t know, uh, Len is a good news or bad news for you, that the answer is yes, they got engaged August 26th of this year.

[00:40:12] Len: The only thing is gonna determine whether it’s good news or bad news is if, if my little baby here got the answer right or not, that’s all I care about.

[00:40:19] Joe: That’s all you. He’s like, that Don’t care. I really don’t care. Just please, uh, please, please protect your dignity. Eight ball. Please, please, please. The answer is yes, they did.

[00:40:31] Joe: What did the eight ball say?

[00:40:37] 8ball: Ask later when the time is right.

[00:40:40] Joe: Well, it’s interesting because I said next year anyway, so I gotta ask that again. Will Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift be engaged by December 1st of this year?

[00:40:51] 8ball: The answer you seek is yes. Oh. Oh, okay. Okay.

[00:40:56] Joe: We got close. We’re

[00:40:57] Len: approaching respectability. No, maybe not less than a coin toss, I guess isn’t respectable, but

[00:41:03] Joe: if we get the next one though, we’re within spitting distance of a coin toss. We’ve got this last one that came from the stacker community. This one came from Glen.

[00:41:12] Joe: He finished it off last year, and it was this Glen asked that I think the world wants to know, and we’ll know this by December 1st, and I hope the answer here is yes, everybody, but Glenn asked the question, will the Detroit Lions. Win the Super Bowl in 2025. And I know all of America wants that to be Yes, because it’s America’s team and I know either we lost people or they’re all all glued in.

[00:41:40] Joe: Who knows? But uh, what’s the answer? Uh, the answer sadly was they got knocked out by the Washington commanders so much crying. Sad. I know. Mindy, you cried the whole time. Just, uh, unbelievable how that could happen this year as we record this run. Sure. They’re gonna make the playoffs so they could be going the way of those chiefs you’ve been talking about.

[00:41:58] Joe: Mindy. Oh, GEV. Will the Lions make the playoffs? Are the Cowboys gonna make the playoffs? Cowboys are not, no,

[00:42:04] OG: they’re out now.

[00:42:05] Joe: Lions you

[00:42:05] OG: think probably gonna be out too. They got a better shot. Would’ve been nice for them to win last week. But

[00:42:11] Joe: man, now Len out there in Southern California, you Rams fan.

[00:42:14] Len: Yes.

[00:42:15] Len: Yes, I am Crow.

[00:42:17] Joe: And so you saw the Rams? Uh, yes. I saw the Rams

[00:42:19] Len: pummel, the Detroit Lions. Let’s move

[00:42:21] Joe: on. Let’s just, let’s just focus on the eight ball, Len.

[00:42:23] Len: Okay.

[00:42:24] Joe: The answer was no, they were not. If to try to come within one of 500, please say no.

[00:42:39] 8ball: Yes, there. It’s,

[00:42:41] Joe: I think that’s a great way to end the first half to today show and there it was.

[00:42:46] Len: That’s brutal.

[00:42:47] Joe: Well, I think, Len, before we ask you questions, uh, for the second half of the show, before we make predictions, here’s what’s gonna happen. Stackers len’s, gonna take the eight ball out back, give it a firm talking to maybe, uh, change out a few of the batteries or something lens so that when we ask you questions for next year here, it’s much more ready to roll len’s.

[00:43:05] Joe: Gonna do that, you’re gonna hear from our sponsors who make sure we can keep on keeping on one more time and then we’re back with the questions. Do I know why we’re gonna ask based on last year, but two years ago it was good. Before that it was on a roll. Can it get back on a roll? We’re gonna find out here in the second half.

[00:43:24] Joe: All right. Mindy Jensen, Jo, see Hi. 2026. You’re gonna be asking three questions that are money related. One question, that’s just a fun one that’s on your brain. Do you wanna start with a fun one or a money one?

[00:43:38] Mindy: Let’s start with the money one.

[00:43:40] Joe: All right. What

[00:43:41] Mindy: do you got? I predict three rate cuts before June and then rate increases after those rate cuts spark more inflation.

[00:43:51] Mindy: So magic eight ball, will there be three rate cuts before June

[00:43:57] Joe: before we ask that Len? Three. Three more rate cuts. I mean, this ends up maybe becoming a time to get your debt refinanced if that happens. Og?

[00:44:07] OG: Uh, yeah. I mean if that happens, that would be a good idea to take advantage of that. Im not on team Mindy here, unfortunately.

[00:44:16] OG: I don’t think that happen. I don’t say I want this to happen, happen,

[00:44:18] Mindy: but I say I think this will happen.

[00:44:20] Joe: Yeah. You don’t think it’s gonna happen though, og? No. There’s no reason to do it. To cut rates three more times. Yeah. What’s the purpose? Uh, the, exactly.

[00:44:32] Mindy: The president has said he wants the rate to be cut.

[00:44:35] Mindy: He’s going to fire. To Rome Powell and get somebody else in there that will reduce rates. Fire him.

[00:44:40] OG: It’s not a political appointee.

[00:44:42] Joe: So we end up with though, uh, fed Chairman much more likely. You’re thinking Mindy, somebody who’s much more likely to change rates to, uh, appease the administration.

[00:44:52] Mindy: That is what I am saying.

[00:44:54] Joe: All right. Well, let’s see. Len is the, is does the eight ball think we’re gonna have three ray cuts by what day? June. June one.

[00:45:10] 8ball: It has been determined, so,

[00:45:12] Joe: well, normally I’d be pretty excited by that. I’d be very excited by that. But after what we just went through the first half of today’s show, Len, I’m not sure if we can, if we, you,

[00:45:21] Len: you know what, I’m not gonna say anything anymore, but, but let’s be fair. Last year I was saying that the eight ball was going way out on a limb, wasn’t I?

[00:45:29] Len: So you were, you kept saying, wow. So let’s, we’ll give the eight ball the benefit of doubt, but uh. Right now, I don’t have a lot of faith in the poor guy.

[00:45:36] Joe: I do think, though, this is in the realm of possibilities, we could get three more, we could get some interesting economic data that comes out. Even between the time that we record this in mid-December and the time this is released, we could get some economic data that changes it.

[00:45:50] Joe: So

[00:45:50] Len: I think they’re predicting two, two by June of next year right now. I think that’s what the, you know, they have those dot plots and the Yeah, and the, uh, I, I think right now the prediction is they’re, they’re leaning towards two by June,

[00:46:01] Joe: which means a third isn’t out of the. I mean, with new information, a third isn’t out of the, but that doesn’t speak, uh, well for the economy if we get that third one.

[00:46:09] Joe: Right. I think if we get the third one, the economic data Mindy’s bad enough that we’re maybe hurting a little.

[00:46:15] Len: There’s also the risk, you know, if, if the economy’s doing well and they’re cutting rates, I mean that’s inflation. That’s very inflationary. So we kind of don’t wanna do that, I don’t think. Sure.

[00:46:23] Joe: Which is why, Mindy, you’re talking about, you know, maybe the

[00:46:26] Mindy: VI think that there will be three rate cuts to appease the administration and those rate cuts will spark inflation because we don’t need rate cuts right now, as much as I would love to have lower rates personally for the economy, it’s not a good idea.

[00:46:43] Mindy: So I’m not saying that this is a great idea that there’s gonna be three rate cuts. I’m just saying that there will be three rate cuts and they will have the adverse reaction that they are supposed to,

[00:46:54] Joe: well, let’s see. I can’t, this makes me excited about a year from now to see how this ends up going.

[00:46:59] Joe: Good or bad. Le Penso. Let’s have you go second my friend. You’re gonna get three. Like Mindy, you’ll get three money questions and a fun one. Which one you wanna start with? The money or a fun one?

[00:47:10] Len: Uh, I’ll start with the money question. Kind of. Um, you know, the Nvidia and, and their arch rival, the, you know, America’s Nvidia, China’s their arch rival is, is, I think it’s pronounced Hu Huawei.

[00:47:22] Len: Huawei. They’re, they’re the other ai they’re their main competitor. What’s interesting is you can invest in Nvidia. You can’t invest in, in Huawei. Right now it’s privately held. I wanna know if Huawei is going to announce an IPO in 2026.

[00:47:38] Joe: Wow. What would be the impetus to have that happen? Would that be to just infuse more money into.

[00:47:46] Len: Ai, they need more cash, I would say for invest. If, if that’s what they’re gonna do it, I think they would just need more, more cash to invest and put it towards the development that they’re working on. They’re in a competitive, highly competitive race right now with Nvidia and you know, money, you need money to compete.

[00:48:02] Len: So maybe they have enough with their private investors right now, but maybe they don’t. But it would be really cool if they do that. IPO sure. That’s a big opportunity for people who might have missed Nvidia.

[00:48:12] Joe: Well, and I’m wondering is it an opportunity though or not? Which was the question I was gonna ask because that so much media now on the quote bubble.

[00:48:20] Joe: In fact, as we record this today, fidelity came out just yesterday saying they think that any bubble, we’ll still get a smooth line. Like you’re not gonna have this big crash that people have been predicting the last few weeks. Might be another question we ask, who knows? But, so the question is, will Huawei be public by December 1st, 2026?

[00:48:42] Len: Let’s say just, all I’m saying is will they announce an IPO? They don’t even have to put IPO out. Will they announce? Okay. Okay. Just announce it.

[00:48:54] Joe: No, they will not. I think that seems much more likely as well.

[00:48:58] Len: I, I agree. I don’t think they’re

[00:48:59] Joe: gonna do it. I think we got a chance that Mindy’s being right. I think it’s on the outside. I could say, I mean, in my brain, maybe 40% chance, uh, Len, I think there’s probably an 80% chance it’s right there. So who knows?

[00:49:11] Joe: We could be two for two this time next year, which would be a huge change from 2025. Who knows? Oh gee. What’s your first one for this year?

[00:49:20] OG: Oh, uh, I’m just gonna go with a real simple one, you know, on, on a tear. And obviously if, uh, we’re cutting rates and having all sorts of fun like that, it’s gonna be party like.

[00:49:28] OG: It’s 1999. So is 2026 gonna be another plus 15 in the s and p five Hyundai? Wow. Over 15%. If we get another plus 15, sell it all, like og. Go super short on when you hear this episode in 26, the end of 26 or early 27 whenever it comes out, what a fantastic year that would be. And how levered will Oog be at the end of the year?

[00:49:53] OG: No, I’m kidding. Um, if we’re a 15, so is the s and p up 15% in 2026?

[00:50:06] 8ball: The answer cannot be found at this moment.

[00:50:08] Joe: Oh, but it has to be. Press it, Lynn.

[00:50:15] 8ball: Yes, I am sure

[00:50:18] Joe: another great year for, we could be three for three. It’s not out on a limb yet. Len. I think that we could have a banner year. I just wonder

[00:50:25] Len: how it goes from, I don’t know. To these. Yes, I am sure it’s like Che, GPT,

[00:50:30] Joe: right? Oh, wait, what? What are we? But yeah. All right. That is round one. Round number two,

[00:50:37] Mindy: Mindy.

[00:50:39] Mindy: Alright, Joe, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but there’s this thing called ai.

[00:50:44] Joe: Oh, I don’t, I’ve never heard of it.

[00:50:45] Mindy: It stands for Artificial Intelligence, Joe, that can tell you all about it. It uses a ton of electricity. I predict that electricity rates are going to absolutely skyrocket this year, thanks to just meteoric demand.

[00:50:59] Mindy: We’ve got data center usage, we’ve got EV adoption. Climate change is real, so everybody’s running their air conditioner longer. Even heat pumps are electric, so I predict that electricity rates will spike and of course people aren’t gonna be happy with it, but magic eight ball will electricity rates one and a half to two X by December 1st.

[00:51:24] Joe: Well, you gotta give us a set number.

[00:51:27] Mindy: Really? Yeah. I don’t know what they’re, right now they’re all over the place.

[00:51:29] OG: One and a half X. We’ll, look at your electric bill. Use you as a proxy.

[00:51:34] Mindy: That is a good idea. I have solar panels.

[00:51:38] Mindy: But

[00:51:39] OG: is

[00:51:39] Mindy: is is your electric

[00:51:40] Joe: bill

[00:51:40] Mindy: zero though? My electric bill is $20. ’cause that’s the hookup charge. I need to use

[00:51:44] OG: mine. Do you wanna use mine? Hold up. I, I’ll, I’ll pull up mine. Do you wanna use OGs? Yeah, let’s use OGs. My kilowatt hour usage is 12.30 cents per, does that sound right? 12 point. That’s cheap.

[00:51:57] Len: That’s very good. But of course I’m in California. We’re way more expensive.

[00:52:00] Joe: Okay, so you’re looking at above 19 then if you want just over 1 12 50. I’m

[00:52:04] OG: 1.30 cents per kilowatt hour. Yeah. So is my straight line bill

[00:52:08] Joe: right now? 18.6 if you want. Uh, 50%.

[00:52:12] Mindy: Alright, so because OGs bill is 12.30 cents, we’re gonna go with 18.6 or higher.

[00:52:20] Mindy: Will the electric rates next year be 18.6 or higher?

[00:52:30] 8ball: You can rely on that.

[00:52:32] Mindy: There you

[00:52:33] Joe: go. Is it gonna be that much higher? Oh,

[00:52:34] Mindy: geez. So

[00:52:34] Joe: sorry. If you would’ve told me that, uh, healthcare costs were gonna jump as much as they did this year, I would’ve been like, nah, I don’t think so. Yeah, that’s not fun. Is electric the next one, man? I hope not.

[00:52:44] Len: I think it’s possible.

[00:52:45] Len: Yeah. You’re, the AI is quite a draw, so it, it, it is, but we’ll see.

[00:52:49] Mindy: And X AI is talking about putting data centers up in space. That’s not gonna happen this year.

[00:52:54] Joe: Just the widespread adoption of AI is a big, big, big story. Len, what’s your second one?

[00:53:02] Len: Okay. Elon Musk, I think he’s still the richest man in the world.

[00:53:07] Len: I saw a thing today that somebody was projecting that he’d be the world’s first trillionaire next year, because something to do with SpaceX, I believe it’s gonna go public or something. And then they were saying if that happened, it would increase his wealth enough to make him the world’s first trillionaire.

[00:53:25] Len: So I think that’s what I’d like to ask.

[00:53:27] Joe: I just looked that up. On the day that we record this, there has been a run up in Oracle stock and uh, Larry Ellison just passed him as the richest person

[00:53:36] Len: for now. Okay, so Ellison is not a trillionaire, right, but not a trillionaire.

[00:53:39] Joe: So the question is, will Musk be the first trillionaire?

[00:53:43] Len: Yes. Next year, will he become the world’s first trillionaire? Or maybe I shouldn’t say first. ’cause maybe, or let me just say, will Elon Musk become a trillionaire? There you go. In 2026. Okay.

[00:54:02] 8ball: The outcome cannot be predicted.

[00:54:07] Joe: Well, I know it can’t eight ball, but we want you to predict anyway. Try harder.

[00:54:15] 8ball: Yes. Without question.

[00:54:18] Joe: The cool thing about that Len, is that makes the eight ball consistent. If og if it’s gonna hit the 15% mark, like OG said, then I think we also get a trillionaire and it could be Elon Musk.

[00:54:31] Len: We could, and I like the good vibes you’re putting out, Joe, the positivity it’s bringing up, uh, the eight balls, uh, self-esteem.

[00:54:37] Len: I’m just

[00:54:38] Joe: trying to give it attaboy, attaboy and mine too. Come on. You can do it. Yes. Alright, that means we’re back to og

[00:54:47] OG: mine’s a two part question, but I think I can still get one answer out of Mr. Predict O, predict O and it involves, uh, back to Bitcoin as a matter of fact. And so this year bitcoin’s kinda not so much.

[00:55:04] OG: And then maybe next year it’ll go, who knows? But my question is this, will Bitcoin see 50,000 before 200,000? And I guess that’s kind of weird ’cause it’s still not time bound, right? I gotta give it like, I gotta, no, that’s a yes

[00:55:19] Len: or no. It’s very possible right? That it can see it. Let’s say it gets to 50 and it never time runs out before it gets to 200.

[00:55:25] OG: It could be a tie break one that makes it so that we don’t have an even number, which

[00:55:29] Len: is

[00:55:29] OG: okay. I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna use this as my question. We’ll just see how it goes. It could hit neither of those. Exactly. So then the answer would,

[00:55:35] Len: would be, and the answer would be no.

[00:55:36] Joe: Right? So does it hit 50 before it hits 200?

[00:55:41] OG: Yeah. And since we gotta put a time on it before the end of 2026, so you know, so by the end of dec, by December 1st, 2026.

[00:55:49] Joe: Yeah.

[00:55:49] OG: So will Bitcoin see 50 K before it sees 200 k?

[00:56:00] 8ball: It’s a strong possibility.

[00:56:02] OG: Mm-hmm. I, I think that means yes. Right? So go, go short Bitcoin and long. Yeah. It’s, it’s saying go short Bitcoin.

[00:56:08] Len: Yep. That’s what it’s saying.

[00:56:09] OG: All

[00:56:09] Joe: right.

[00:56:10] OG: Levered three x

[00:56:10] Joe: baby. To be clear, what does that mean then if it doesn’t need either one?

[00:56:14] Len: It’s, no, it didn’t hit 50 before it hit 200,000.

[00:56:19] Len: Right? It’s okay,

[00:56:20] OG: we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out. We have a whole year to solve this problem. We’ll

[00:56:23] opener: just hit post

[00:56:25] OG: 365 odd days to, to figure out how to answer this question. And there’s some chance we don’t have to. Maybe it does one or the other,

[00:56:34] Joe: but you’re right, og I mean, if it hasn’t reached either one, maybe it’s a nothing burger.

[00:56:38] Joe: And then that gives us, you know, so we don’t have 12. That’s the tiebreaker. We got 11. Yeah. Alright. Um, we are at halfway point, which means, Mindy, we swing back to you. We’ve, you’ve got one money question and one fun one left.

[00:56:49] Mindy: Okay. I predict that the Chicago Bears are going to make it to the Super Bowl where they’ll, this is your last

[00:56:54] Joe: money question.

[00:56:55] Mindy: Yes.

[00:56:58] Len: She’s got money on this.

[00:56:59] Mindy: Do I have to do money

[00:57:00] Joe: next? No, you don’t. I was just kidding.

[00:57:03] Mindy: Okay. I predict that the Chicago Bears will go to the Super Bowl where they will face the Denver Broncos. Who are the ones that are gonna actually win?

[00:57:10] Joe: Which piece of that do you wanna ask? Will the Chicago Bears make the Super Bowl?

[00:57:15] Joe: Will the Denver Broncos win the Super Bowl? Or the much harder one, which would be will the Bears face the Broncos and lose?

[00:57:26] Mindy: Ooh, let’s do that last one. The hard one.

[00:57:29] Len: Oh, you’re brutal.

[00:57:30] Joe: Will the Bears face the Broncos and lose in the 2026 Super Bowl coming up in just over a month.

[00:57:44] 8ball: It is a certainty.

[00:57:46] Joe: Oh God, no.

[00:57:49] Mindy: I will have, you know, I successfully predicted who was going to the Super Bowl. That’s a loser in 2007 at the beginning of the season.

[00:57:56] Len: Did you really? You can mark that a loser right now. Yeah. For

[00:58:01] Joe: of course. I remember Len, wait, we can go back and play the tape. The first time that, uh, Donald Trump won and, and we were just in the primaries and you said, will Donald Trump be president?

[00:58:10] Joe: And we’re like, there’s no way in hell that’s gonna happen.

[00:58:12] Len: Yep. And it was right. So you never know. Maybe Mindy, it’s right. Yeah.

[00:58:17] Joe: Alright, Len, what is your penultimate question?

[00:58:22] Len: Well, let’s see. Okay, well, obviously I’ve gotta ask a gold question here. So Gold right now, in mid-December here, it’s about 4300th.

[00:58:30] Len: Will Gold get to $6,000? What, by December 1st? By December 1st?

[00:58:44] 8ball: Yes, I am sure.

[00:58:47] OG: This is like Che, GPT. You can ask Che, GPT anything. And it’s like, what? What was the article that you wrote? Sure. It’s like, it’s like your mom. It’s like your third grade T-ball coach. It’s like, of course you can do that. Of course. Like I wanna be an astronaut of, you should aim for the stars friend.

[00:59:05] OG: Just always so supportive, can

[00:59:06] Joe: do whatever it wants to. If it puts its mind to it,

[00:59:10] OG: it’s always so supportive of everything you wanna do. You’re like, I’ve got three days to lose 37 pounds for my photo shoot on the beach. You can do it

[00:59:19] Mindy: work really hard. It could happen. Will OG lose 37 pounds in three days?

[00:59:25] Len: It is certain that would be a 33% game. Basically a little more than that. And that is

[00:59:31] Joe: two in a row where I went, Ugh. Oh boy. Oh gee.

[00:59:38] OG: I’m going back to football because, uh, because I like the football question. I disagree with both the Bears and the Broncos, but we’ll see. But I, you know, the talk of the town right now is Kurt Sign Netti and the, uh, Indiana Hoosiers.

[00:59:51] OG: And no, we’re not talking about the basketball team ’cause they’re not the talk of anything right now. We’re talking about, uh, the football team, which by the way, speaking of Indiana basketball, do your kids a favor and show them some old school Bobby Knight videos of him, like absolutely losing his mind because that stuff doesn’t happen anymore.

[01:00:11] OG: Like, there’s very rarely do people crash out like that, especially on like public tv where he just totally glitches out and throws the chair. And then there’s another time where he like goes out to like check on his player and he gets teed up for going out to check on his player. And it just, all hell breaks loose.

[01:00:28] OG: It is. It’s awesome to watch.

[01:00:30] Joe: Oh, and he complains to that reporter about how dumb the question was.

[01:00:34] OG: Yeah. I mean, just, it’s really, really quite good. So, uh, do yourself a favor and go watch some old Bobby Knight videos, uh, and then watch Hoosiers. ’cause you know, why not gotta watch Hoosiers Half Love. Uh, so is the fine folks in, uh, Bloomington, I think right?

[01:00:49] OG: Bloomington, Indiana, are they gonna hoist the CFP Naty in 2026?

[01:01:00] 8ball: I’m confident it’s no.

[01:01:03] Len: Wow. I think the money’s on Georgia. Was that cool? He had me at first. He said confident. I was like, oh, good. Call me too. And then he said, no, that’s, yeah.

[01:01:12] Joe: It’s so hard to win a national championship. So I actually, while I, you know, like much of the nation we’re pulling for Indiana, I think, um, I, I think the eight ball might get that one right?

[01:01:23] Joe: Yeah.

[01:01:23] Len: Sadly. Yeah. The odds are with them.

[01:01:25] Joe: Mindy, you were gonna say.

[01:01:27] Mindy: I was gonna say og, if you wanna see some temper tantrums more recently than Bobby Knight. John Gruden is a good one.

[01:01:33] OG: Yeah, he, he had some pretty good stuff in football, of course, but boy, the old school basketball guys, who was the guy? Gene Keating at Purdue.

[01:01:41] OG: Yeah. Like, you know him. Judd Heath coat at Michigan State. Good night. Those guys would go crazy. I mean, I’m sure football was the same way.

[01:01:51] Len: And in baseball it’d be, uh, some great interviews on tape of Tommy Lasorda. Lasorda. I was gonna say Tommy Lasorda and, uh, Earl Weaver as well. Both, both of ’em. Earl, Earl Weaver.

[01:02:00] Joe: Yeah.

[01:02:00] Len: Those two, you can get some classic videos of them. Ripping reporters and others. Umpires, who

[01:02:05] Joe: was the Yankee manager who kept getting fired and, uh, would come back and coach again. Is it Yogi Berra? No, he was a coach for ever. Oh, Billy

[01:02:16] Len: Martin. Billy Martin. Billy Martin. Billy,

[01:02:18] Joe: yeah. Yeah. Billy Martin also would, would go off the deep end.

[01:02:21] Joe: Yeah. Alright. Uh, enough old guy stories.

[01:02:26] OG: Yeah, that’s really old. Later. I was listening to my AM radio station in sunny afternoon. I heard this young man arguing with the officials. Boy, it was a sporty conversation.

[01:02:39] Joe: Uh, where are we at? OG s that one. So we’re, we’re down to the final round. Mindy, what you got?

[01:02:47] Mindy: Oh, honestly, I don’t really have much of anything else. There’s a khap economy news story floating around where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I think that’s gonna continue. I think next year we’re gonna have the people who are invested in the stock market that keeps going up doing better.

[01:03:05] Mindy: And the people who are not invested in the stock market or are, are losing their jobs or having more the inflation is gonna affect them more. I think the khap economy continues.

[01:03:15] Joe: How do you monitor that? How do you ask the question?

[01:03:19] Mindy: Well, Joe, it’s been a year since I recorded this last time, and I don’t remember how to do this right, so I,

[01:03:25] Joe: I dunno how you do it either.

[01:03:27] Joe: I had no idea how you asked that question. It’s a freebie for the eight ball.

[01:03:30] Mindy: Yeah. Okay. How about this? Tesla has, uh, started a robo taxi fleet except in Austin, Texas. They just took their drivers out. They had safety drivers sitting in the passenger seat. They have said that they’re going to start delivering cars, driverless cars to people.

[01:03:47] Mindy: They have delivered one, so technically they’re correct. Will Tesla deliver 10,000 driverless cars by December 1st, 2026?

[01:03:58] Joe: All of a sudden, you’re a ninja. All of a sudden, you like know exactly how to ask the question. Can

[01:04:03] Len: you ask

[01:04:04] Joe: it

[01:04:04] Len: again? No, just kidding.

[01:04:11] 8ball: It cannot be determined at this time.

[01:04:14] Mindy: Try again.

[01:04:19] 8ball: Highly doubtful. Oh,

[01:04:22] Joe: wow.

[01:04:23] OG: I could see

[01:04:23] Joe: that. I could see

[01:04:24] OG: that one too. I don’t know. Len, I saw a story the other day about robo taxis. Driverless taxis. I don’t remember the town. I believe it was Dallas. Could have been Fort Worth. It wasn’t Austin where all the Waymo cars are disregarding. Um, or maybe it wasn’t Austin.

[01:04:42] OG: They’re disregarding, uh, school buses. And so school buses stop. You don’t put the arm out. Stop flash. Kids cross and they just, just drive. They don’t stop for the kids. They don’t stop for the, they don’t set. They’ve got like thousands of videos of this and the answer that the Waymo people have. I’m putting them out there because if you work there, and this is your answer, shame on you.

[01:05:04] OG: Their answer is, yeah, we’re working really hard on the software. Yeah. We’re just, you know, it’s just a, it’s just a hard thing to get programmed in. Correct. Could you imagine if I just zip past a couple of school buses and the officer’s like, what are you doing? You can’t do that. Like, first of all, it’s a gigantic ass ticket that they’re gonna hit you with, and at the least as they should.

[01:05:22] OG: Absolutely. As they should. And secondly, they would be like, what are you doing? And I’d go, ah, yeah. You know, it’s just really hard to learn those flashing signs. You know, there’s some random places I, you know, I’m gonna work really hard on it. Next time they’d be like, we don’t give a shit. Here’s your ticket, bro, and we’ll see you in court.

[01:05:36] OG: Why are we not finding the living crap out of these people? Every time it’s on, you know, they have the videos, they have, you know, ’cause they got the traffic cameras or whatever attached to these. Every single one of these should be the same freaking fine traffic, fine to that company that you and I would have to pay.

[01:05:53] OG: And frankly, it should be docked outta some idiot programmer’s paycheck until they get this solved. Because this thing’s gonna run over some kid and they’re gonna be like, oh God, that really sucks, man. We’re sorry. It’s a computer. What are you gonna do? I, it’s right. It is. That was my thought.

[01:06:05] Joe: Og, why don’t they just go hire the emergency PR firm?

[01:06:08] Joe: Uh, right now that they’re gonna need and start teaching the CEO to say, I’m sorry.

[01:06:14] OG: Well, and I kind of don’t understand why the police, they did an interview about this, and I think it was in Austin or some city around Austin, where they did the interview with the chief police. They’re like, yeah, it’s crazy.

[01:06:22] OG: I mean, driverless cars, they’re nuts. It’s like, no, dude, start sending freaking tickets. Like this is why the whole government exists, this particular reason to prevent major, major, major issues, not necessarily out there to do a bunch of other crazy stuff. Literally, yes, city prosecutors like do a lawsuit anyways.

[01:06:44] OG: Ooh, ooh, ooh. Needless to say, I’ll not be buying a driverless frigging Tesla anytime soon, or any other car for that matter that’s driverless. I’m not sure how OG feels about that. I like the ones where they like drive eight 50 miles an hour into the flooded road. There’s like flying right into it. Or the traffic circles where they get caught in the traffic circles.

[01:07:09] OG: I love that one. That one makes me laugh. I’m caught in a taxi and I can’t get out. I can’t get out because this thing’s driving 40 miles an hour in a circle.

[01:07:19] Joe: Len, uh, what’s your last one?

[01:07:22] Len: Well, I’m gonna change. We had, we’ve had a couple football questions. I’m gonna go against, I was gonna do something about the World Cup.

[01:07:27] Len: I’m going to go away from that. The average price of a Big Mac. They always talk about that for inflation. They’ll say, well, let’s look at the average. So I just went on to Google. Not me though, Len.

[01:07:37] Joe: I talk about the price of a school lunch. That’s what I talked about for inflation, which is what we should be talking about.

[01:07:43] Len: Yes. And and actually I, we do that as kickoff for the sandwich survey as well. That’s what I always use as my jumping off point. But I thought for this one, just for fun. ’cause people, some people go to McDonald’s still, I, I don’t know. If a lot of you do, ’cause they’re so expensive. But, uh, on Google I typed in average price of a Big Mac.

[01:08:01] Len: And you know how the AI overview is the first thing that comes up. Now, according to the AI overview on Google, and I guess we could use this as the authority for next year to determine what it is this year, it says it’s 5 79. 5 79. So I wanna know on December 1st of next year, when you Google in average price of a Big Mac, will the AI overview say the average price of a Big Mac is $6 and 50 cents or higher?

[01:08:34] Len: Big increase?

[01:08:40] OG: Definitely, yes. Oh boy. It’s like a 20% increase in Big Max. Yeah, that’s what it says.

[01:08:47] Joe: After all the inflation we’ve had at restaurants, I’m not sure that, uh, I don’t know about that one.

[01:08:52] Len: I don’t know. A few years ago it wasn’t. I don’t think it was two or three bucks, and it’s already up to 5 79. So you never know.

[01:08:59] Len: Especially the rates are going down, right? If, if they drop those interest rates and the economy’s still roaring, you never know. You never know. Just McDonald’s decides

[01:09:08] Joe: to take advantage of it. Grab every dollar, we shall see. Uh, and we’re recording this, so I’m hungry. I don’t know why that question made me so hungry.

[01:09:15] Joe: I’m like, oh, big Mac. That sounds really good right now. Og, you’ve got the final question for 2026.

[01:09:26] OG: Well, I’m gonna stick with the inflation theme there, Len, for just a quick second. You’ve got quite an inflation rate there assigned to Big Mac. It might be a McDonald’s profitability inflation increase. I did see this thing the other day on Reddit where it was a, um, there was a McDonald’s in a Lucian Island military base.

[01:09:48] OG: At one point in time, they just shut down the base, like literally kind of, kind of overnight, you know, they’re like, Hey, we don’t need this thing anymore. Um, you know, those Russians are never coming at us ever again, so we’re good. We can close this thing down. It’s like kind of a town that’s kind of, pardon the expression, frozen in time.

[01:10:08] OG: See what I did there anyways, I saw a picture of, of a, uh, display board from the McDonald’s, the drive-through. Like here’s how much everything was. It wasn’t that far off. It was like the nineties and it was, you know, it was like three bucks for a Big Mac, like you said. I think there’s some higher costs there being in the middle of nowhere in Alaska at the time.

[01:10:26] OG: Sure. But, but I think most people look at that and go, yeah. You know, I dunno. Anyway, so back to my inflation thing. I’m just gonna look at regular core, core inflation year over year. So I’m just looking at, uh, data as of September of 2025. So maybe that’s as early or as, you know, recent as the data is, you know, ’cause it gets adjusted and so and so forth,

[01:10:48] Joe: which means what to go September again,

[01:10:50] OG: which is fine.

[01:10:51] OG: Sure. And we’re at 3.1. Was the estimate and it, it rose to 3% in 2020 in, I’m sorry, in September year over year. So September 25, backward to, uh, September of 24 was right at 3%. This is the CPI, right? Yes. CPI. And so my question, is it going to be over 3% year over year, uh, when we look at this again in September, 2026?

[01:11:25] 8ball: Definitely, yes.

[01:11:27] OG: Okay. So the themes, I’ll check the themes. Do Stock market goes crazy because of all the rate cuts and inflation skyrockets. Everybody goes, oh crap, I gotta put my money in gold.

[01:11:38] Len: Which would make sense too with inflation. The price you would expect the gold price to go up to in Infl. I mean the story that the eight ball is telling here, it, it, it’s not, uh, contradictory.

[01:11:47] Joe: Let’s look at it this way Len. It’s either gonna be really, really right or,

[01:11:54] Len: or it’s gonna be like this time, like this

[01:11:56] Joe: year, it’s it because it definitely does. It’s got a theme next year, stock market up. Good time to refinance your debt by June, ’cause Mindy will be right on the, on the rate cuts. And then, uh, watch out for the inflation and uh, buy all your Big Max the first half of the year.

[01:12:14] OG: Double lever your stock portfolio and short Bitcoin.

[01:12:18] Joe: There it is. And don’t count on buying Chinese AI stocks ’cause they won’t be

[01:12:23] Len: available. They won’t be there to, to buy.

[01:12:25] Joe: Man, that was fun as always guys. Thank you so much for helping us.

[01:12:29] Len: The time just flew Joe. It just flew.

[01:12:31] Joe: It is crazy that we’re doing this again.

[01:12:33] Joe: When I was even emailing you guys about this, I’m like, can you believe, I feel like we just made these predictions and apparently the eight ball wasn’t ready for the answers because holy cow. But let’s find out what you guys are doing og. It is the second outta of January. What you got going on this weekend?

[01:12:50] OG: Uh, every year at this time, uh, we bail to the Caribbean for a week. Fine dining. Oh, that sounds horrible. At what’s called the Cayman cookout. We’re hanging out, uh, with some of the world’s greatest chefs on the beach, eating caviar and drinking champagne. It’s a tough life,

[01:13:05] Joe: but hey, that sounds horrible. And as we record this every year, you’ve got some spectacular, do you know who the chefs are gonna be yet?

[01:13:12] OG: Yeah, they’re largely all the same year over year. There’s a couple people switch here and there, but largely the same guys in Gia. And, uh, Andre

[01:13:21] Joe: is, um, what’s his name?

[01:13:24] OG: Jose Andres. Jose Andres is, uh, always has a big thing. It’s hosted by Eric Repair from, uh, LA Barine in, uh, New York. And, uh, blue in, uh, the Caymans or his restaurants.

[01:13:37] OG: I think he probably, he probably has more than that, but

[01:13:38] Joe: I gotta tell you, watching, uh, the latest, uh, season of Chef’s Table and watching the episode on, uh, Jose Andreas’s career yeah. Was pretty incredible. The amount of things that guy’s done in giving, he’s done. He’s just mm-hmm. Yeah. Quite an amazing fellow.

[01:13:52] Joe: He’s a

[01:13:53] OG: guy, for sure. Yep.

[01:13:54] Joe: Speaking of amazing, thanks for hanging out with us, Mindy Jensen. Thanks for having me Joe’s. See Hi. I always have a lot of fun here. It was, it was super. It’s always, I always apologize at the end about how long this recording is. ’cause for people that don’t know, it takes us forever to get through recording this episode.

[01:14:14] Joe: But what’s magical is when you listen to BiggerPockets money. So what’s going on over there with you and Scott to kick off the year?

[01:14:22] Mindy: We are talking about retirement, we’re talking about people who are starting a little bit later in life. Last year we did a fictitious plan for a woman named Barb, who’s fake starting over from her life at age 50.

[01:14:38] Mindy: She has essentially $0 in net worth. Here’s a plan to get her retired in 10 years, and then we are doing it now. She didn’t have any debt. Now we’re getting ready to talk to Nancy, who is also fake, who has some debt involved in her story and the different things she can do to get herself to early retirement or traditional retirement if she’s starting at H 50.

[01:14:58] Mindy: ’cause we do believe that you can still retire no matter when or where you’re starting.

[01:15:02] Joe: Cool thing is, there’s lots of Barbs and Nancys out there. There are, yeah. Good stuff. And that’s it. The BiggerPockets Money Podcast, where finer podcasts are downloaded and streamed. Mr. Penso, thanks for kicking off 2026 with us again, man.

[01:15:17] Joe: What’s [email protected]? Le

[01:15:20] Len: penso.com. That’s right where the ads are always plentiful and it’s very hard to read the actual articles in between the ads. Not true, which is intentional, however, ’cause I want you to accidentally click on those ads. Hint hint, when you come to my blog, come on by and accidentally click on a few ads.

[01:15:37] Len: That’s what I like,

[01:15:38] Joe: the always good entertaining stuff.

[01:15:40] Len: Yeah. Hey, and if you get a chance, buy my book. It’s on Amazon and at finer bookstores everywhere. Well, actually, I haven’t found one in a bookstore yet, but maybe one of these days. It might be a might. Somebody might have sold a used one or something at some bookstore.

[01:15:54] Joe: We gotta work on that. We gotta get you into bookstores across America, Len, let’s get that done. That’s our 2026 goal right there.

[01:16:01] Mindy: What’s the name of the book, Len?

[01:16:03] Len: It’s called True Money Stories. True Money Stories. It’s definitely on Amazon. You can find it there.

[01:16:08] Joe: Fantastic. And, uh, 34 AI ripoff versions of No, that’s right.

[01:16:15] Joe: Has that happened yet? I don’t know. Do they, is that true? Well, they’re doing it to all the books. I mean, people go out, are you serious? They make AI ripoff versions yet? Well, it’s like a guide to Lens book, or really a Guide to Mindy’s podcast or, yeah, it’s horrible. Just people. Oh, I didn’t know that.

[01:16:30] Len: No

[01:16:31] Joe: people ripping stuff off and throwing it up at Amazon as fast as they can.

[01:16:35] Joe: You’ll find Len’s Book, Len’s blog, Mindy’s podcast, and. All the questions we asked Magic eightball this year on our show notes page at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Doug, man, you got it from here. What should we have learned on today’s episode?

[01:16:49] opener: So what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today? First, take some advice from our round table based on 2020 five’s results.

[01:16:57] opener: Don’t try and predict the future. If our magic eight ball can’t do it, your luck might be not so great. Second surprises during 2026, it is certain, but the big lesson, what are you doing trying to predict the future instead of making stuff happen? Let’s get rolling on a great 2026, huh? Who’s with me?

[01:17:26] opener: Thanks to Mindy Jensen for joining us today to predict the future. You know what’s in your future listening to BiggerPockets Money podcast. That’s what we’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Thanks to the great Swami Len Pezo for hanging out with us today. You’ll find [email protected] when he isn’t scolding his magic eight ball for the horrible year he had.

[01:17:50] opener: Thanks also to OG for joining us today. Looking for good financial planning. Help head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG for his calendar. This show is the Property of SP podcast, llc, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots.

[01:18:17] opener: Come say hello and oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

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Our Topic: Magic 8-Ball predictions for 2026

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