Welcome back to Money Games, my monthly take on sports, business, and all things leadership. Thanks for reading and subscribing, and please share with your friends and colleagues.
— Joe
Every year I share some predictions about the twelve months to come. Here’s my list from last year. While I made the right call in a lot of areas, my golf game remains a work in progress.
As we move into 2026, here are the major trends I expect for the coming year. Let me know what you’re predicting in the comments!
NIL will continue to go crazy in college football. By the end of the 2026-2027 season, we will have a handful of college players making eight figures. That’s a 20 year old kid making $12 million. In a capitalist society, you assume that everybody is going to operate in their own best interest. The vast majority of the Power 4 universities have almost unlimited money with virtually no oversight from the NCAA at this point. There are essentially no rules that apply to them. It’s a horrible business model, but those universities feel they’ve got an awful lot of money. The only way things are going to change is if the model changes, and that will only happen if the Power 4 football schools break away and form the Professional College Athletics Association.
There’s no chance the NCAA steps up in a real effort to get things fixed other than reaching out to the government and asking for help. I have not heard anything from the NCAA about academics in a year. As long as the Power 4 schools have it as good as they do, I can appreciate why they’re not in a hurry to move on. But it’s a bad system. If the NFL ran themselves this way, they’d go out of business. They wouldn’t make it.
What President Reagan said decades ago is still true today. The nine worst words in the English language are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” The public sector is made up of politicians. There are a few business people in public service, but not a lot. The primary objective of a politician is to get elected or reelected. To make that happen, they need to please their constituents. They also need to negotiate and compromise. This means they’re not making great decisions, they’re making compromised decisions to win elections. On the other hand, CEOs have clear cut objectives: maximize shareholder value and earnings. I can’t imagine a successful business where you had to reach consensus with everybody in the room. It’s impossible to maximize your potential that way. We have a Democratic socialist as mayor in New York City. There’s a reason that happened. There are approximately 8 million people in New York City proper, and while the average income is well into the six figures, the median income is more like $80,000. That means there are a lot of people who think it sounds pretty good when a politician says they’ll give this or that away for free.
It will be a good year for crypto. At least I hope so, since I’ve been aggressively buying Bitcoin, Solana, and Ethereum. Of course, if the basic reasons change for the negative, we’re going to sell. Good risk management also suggests that as a particular position does well, we take some off the table. I’ve been an aggressive buyer of Bitcoin (ARKB), Ethereum (FGNX) and Solana (FWDI) on weakness. The two DATs (Digital Asset Treasuring companies) have been trading at discounts to the underlying crypto asset. And I do believe in it for the long-term.
The yield curve will steepen. We’ll see 100 basis points between 2s and 10s. I expect the front end to come down. I think the Fed still eases, but I don’t necessarily see the longer end coming down. That would be very, very good for financials.
The S&P will get to around 7,600. The market will continue to be strong on AI. I can also see a long-term bull market for commodities, led by gold.
The Seahawks will win the Super Bowl. They’ve got an incredible defense and have succeeded in putting together an effective offense. Plus, their special teams can be a real difference-maker. They’re very sound across the board.
Turkey will control inflation… NOT. Annual CPI inflation in Turkey as of December 2025 was almost 31%. That’s really high, obviously. Can they bring that down some? Yes. Can they bring that down to tolerable levels? No. They haven’t been able to do that in recent times, I don’t know why they will in the near future.
This will still be a capitalist country, despite a socialist getting elected in New York City. I don’t think New York City is emblematic of the rest of the country. It’s almost a universe unto itself. There are a lot of different industries there. It’s got the fashion district, the theater district. It’s a place for the arts. It’s a business and financial center. That’s not what the rest of the country looks like at all. New York City is more diverse. It’s denser and younger. Education levels are high. Incomes are high as well, but poverty is also higher than in other parts of the country. There are 29,000 people per square mile in New York City vs. 95-100 in the US as a whole. The needs and opportunities, and the political realities and challenges, are really different than in the rest of the country, even many other cities.
We’ll know about some of these, like the Super Bowl, very soon.
For the rest, time will tell.
The great Vince Lombardi had some succinct words about motivation:
“Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.”
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