Hedgeye Podcasts · Hedgeye Risk Management

Ep.135 Real Conversations → Crystal Ball: Mike Taylor’s 2026 Market Predictions

·1 hr 8 min·2 clips

Keith McCullough brings Mike Taylor back in as a familiar and increasingly visible presence inside Hedgeye Nation. He jokes that Mike has turned into a celebrity and notes that Mike even came up with the name HAM. The conversation immediately circles back to Mike's earlier prediction, which Keith says was strong enough that someone took it down. Mike says he did not keep a copy because he rattled it off on January 1, then later had to recover a snapshot of it after the fact. That sets the tone for a discussion about forecasting as something live, not neat or archived. The episode keeps returning to what a prediction means when the market keeps moving underneath it. Keith says this is a very different year and keeps pressing on the idea that risk has to be handled differently. The two of them treat the market as something to argue with, not just describe. Mike's history and current form become part of the point, with Keith calling out his performance and suggesting he is ready to break out again. The conversation feels like a desk catching up after a rough stretch and seeing room to lean back in. A long stretch of the discussion is about how people think too small about investing. Keith says plenty of listeners only want stock picks, but he pushes back on that instinct. The more durable skill, as they frame it, is learning how to build a book. They contrast that with the old boomer-style demand for a ticker call and instead talk about long-short positioning, hedges, and the wider framework behind individual names. The point is not one trade, but how a portfolio hangs together when the world keeps repricing risk. They also bring in a generational angle, suggesting that the next cohort will need to know how to build, not just consume ideas. Keith says Jack and Max are going to know how to build a book with hedges and with fourth turning embedded in it. That gives the episode its larger thesis: investing is becoming more about structure, adaptation, and regimes than about simple directional bets. The conversation treats that as common sense rather than a grand theory. There is also a blunt social thread running through the exchange. They joke about borrowed money, government support, plumbers, electricians, and the way people label different kinds of work. Those asides are not random filler so much as part of the show's habit of tying markets to real life, labor, status, and the way ordinary people actually make money. The banter is loose, but it keeps landing on the same idea: the economy is not abstract when you are the one working in it. The episode does not feel like a classroom. It sounds more like an analyst desk thinking out loud, correcting itself, then going one layer deeper. Keith and Mike move quickly between personality, process, and performance. They leave room for jokes, but the jokes are doing work. They break up the technical language so the larger framework can keep moving. Later, the conversation returns to Mike's chart and the sense that his current run matters. Keith points out that the performance is visible and says it matters even more given what Mike went through personally. Mike responds that he has had successful medical interventions, which adds a quiet note of recovery underneath the market talk. The point is not melodrama. It is that the work, the health, and the investing all sit in the same frame. The episode keeps its energy by treating predictions as part argument, part memory, and part public record. Keith's role is to push, tease, and widen the lens. Mike's role is to answer with a book-builder's sensibility and a willingness to put a view on paper, even if the internet later loses it. Together they make a case for market thinking that is less about certainty than about having a structure sturdy enough to survive being wrong. The result is messy in places, but the mess is the point. What holds it together is the conviction that markets reward process more than pose. They keep coming back to the idea that listeners should learn how to build, hedge, and adapt rather than chase isolated calls. The conversation keeps turning individual predictions into a broader investing method. That is the real subject here, even when the discussion wanders through jokes, self-corrections, and side comments. Keith and Mike also lean into the social side of the show. The tone is familiar, a little irreverent, and comfortable assuming the listener already speaks some market dialect. They do not stop to define every term. They expect the audience to keep up. That expectation gives the episode its pace and edge. The prediction angle never disappears, but it is never just a list of names either. The episode is about how one year's call becomes the next year's setup, and how memory, proof, and follow-through matter in public market talk. The result is a conversation that feels less like a segment and more like a running argument about how to survive and think clearly in market conditions that keep changing.

As heard by us

A market talk that favors process, hedges, and conviction over quick ticker calls.

Hedgeye keeps the conversation centered on process, risk, conviction, and hedges rather than quick stock calls. Keith McCullough keeps things moving while Mike Taylor revisits an earlier call, explains what held up, and uses the current setup to argue from process instead of…

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Why you'd press play

You want a Hedgeye Real Conversation with Keith McCullough, where the focus is on investing ideas, long-short framing, and a live back-and-forth about tickers and predictions.

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