Remember January when everyone was making bold calls about 2026? Yeah, me too. Some of those predictions are already looking pretty smart. Others? Well, let’s just say the market had other ideas.
Here’s the thing about forecasting—you’re basically throwing darts at a board while blindfolded. But if you throw enough darts, some are bound to hit. So let’s check in on three big calls that were made back when the year was fresh and full of possibility.
## The Magnificent Seven Got a Reality Check
First prediction: The Mag 7 stocks would lose steam. And guess what? They did.
The story here is pretty straightforward. Building AI infrastructure costs an absolute fortune, and the payoff timeline keeps getting fuzzier. We’re talking about companies spending hundreds of billions on data centers and chips, but the actual revenue from all this AI stuff? Still a question mark.
Wall Street’s finally asking the uncomfortable questions: “Where’s the actual profit?” and “What happens when everyone has shiny new AI models but nobody can charge for them?” These aren’t crazy questions. They’re the questions that should’ve been asked months ago.
The result? $2.3 trillion got wiped off the Mag 7’s value. The group that was supposed to carry the market is now basically flat for the year. Meanwhile, the rest of the market’s been doing just fine. That’s not a coincidence—it’s a rotation.
## Copper’s Still Climbing (But Not Fast Enough)
Second prediction: Copper hits $7.50 per pound in 2026.
We’re halfway through the year and copper’s at $6.19. That’s up from $5.70 six months ago, but we’re not at the finish line yet. The thesis is solid though—data centers need copper, renewable energy needs copper, basically everything AI-related needs copper. Supply’s tight, demand’s crazy, so prices should keep climbing.
The real winner here? Copper miners. Freeport-McMoRan is up over 20% year-to-date while the Mag 7 is treading water. That’s the kind of boring, unglamorous play that actually makes money while everyone’s obsessing over the next big tech IPO.
## Gold’s Beating Bitcoin (Badly)
Third prediction: Gold outperforms Bitcoin.
This one’s not even close. Bitcoin’s down 32% year-to-date. Gold’s only down 7%. Both are getting hammered against the dollar, but Bitcoin’s getting absolutely destroyed.
Gold took a sharp hit recently—lost over $1,000 off its price—but the expectation is it bounces back in the second half as the Fed gets more dovish. Bitcoin? It’s still trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up.
## What’s Next?
The real lesson here isn’t that some predictions worked and others didn’t. It’s that the market’s finally waking up to reality. The AI boom is real, but it’s not a free pass to infinite valuations. The companies actually using AI to make money are where the opportunity is now, not the companies just building the infrastructure.
With six months left in 2026, the smart move is positioning for what’s actually happening, not what you hoped would happen back in January.
