The Upcoming Week 11/30/25
Santa is coming...
I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving week and enjoyed a chance to get off the screens, if even just for a little while!
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind to say the least… we’ve gone from “it’s over” to "it’s not over” quickly. The Nasdaq suffered an 8.5% drawdown from peak to trough and we’ve already recovered a chunk of those losses already. The S&P500 looked like it was going to close red for the first time in 6 months yet closed positive, marking 7 consecutive months of closing green. This run off the April lows has been unbelievable.
Something important to note is that many of the leaders of this market such as NVDA, PLTR, HOOD, etc. are still off their recent highs by a sizable margin, yet the indices are nearly back to all time highs. This is textbook rotation, something I have been discussing and mentioning in these articles for over a month now. The rotation hasn’t just been to other sectors such as healthcare, underneath the hood there has been significant rotation into other technology stocks. Right now, many of the “leaders of tomorrow” are likely starting to percolate today. By the time everyone is talking about these stocks in 2026 they will likely be significantly higher… I’m going to discuss some of the names I think are showing their hand before a strong 2026 in this article and in the weeks ahead.
I also want to let you all know I’ve already started working on my 2026 year ahead preview. Last year’s was a huge success with the vast majority of themes and many of the names outperforming the market by a wide margin. In that preview I highlighted the risk of a major correction in H1 2025 tied to Trump volatility and tariffs that would end up being buyable, why I expected solar and China to outperform, and more. The 2026 preview will be posted exclusively here on Substack and as we get closer to the end of 2025, I’ll share a full recap of how the 2025 preview performed. A few of the picks included OKLO, KTOS, NBIS, TEM, EOSE, FSLR, and more. If you want to review the 2025 preview, you can find it here. The 2026 preview will be far more in depth now that I finally have a space where I can break everything down properly.
It wasn’t easy, but the last few weeks presented the best buying opportunity the market has seen since the April crash over 6 months ago. On 11/21 I notified subscribers I took on three new positions in BE, RDDT, and GEV. BE is now +30%, RDDT +16%, and GEV +10%. There’s a lot of love for buying breakouts and strength but in my opinion, some of the lowest risk entries are actually the opposite. Pullbacks, retests, undercuts, consolidations, and “ugly” are often the best buys you can make. Why? Because the lower your cost basis, the lower your risk.
Reports are already out showing that U.S. Black Friday sales hit a new record high. Online sales reached $11.8B, up almost 10% YoY according to Adobe Analytics. Adobe is also expecting shoppers to spend another $11B across Saturday and Sunday while Cyber Monday is projected to clear $14B. Shopify also dropped their own numbers and they were just as strong: Shopify merchants generated $6.2B in sales on Friday, up 25% from last year and marking a new all time high for the platform. This is something I noticed myself this weekend, everywhere was packed and the consumer was spending.
I also want to call something out here that I’ve been talking about for a while, fear and negativity sell. All year we’ve heard nonstop talk about how the consumer is tapped out, how nobody can afford anything, how the economy is falling apart, and how we’re heading an economic collapse. Yet when you look at the actual behavior of people in the real world, it looks much different. Travel has been strong all year, retail is holding up, etc. You don’t post record Black Friday numbers and massive online sales growth if the average person is struggling mightily. Yes, some people aren’t doing well… but isn’t that always the case? There will always be pockets of society who are doing worse than the rest. You could also make the argument that people are putting these items on credit cards… but couldn’t you make that argument any year?
That’s not to say that everything is great. Housing is unaffordable and things are getting more expensive, but it’s important to separate real challenges from the exaggerated doom narrative. The economy can have areas of strain while still being stronger and more resilient than the major headlines suggest. One thing I have been harping on is the labor market… this will be the biggest thing to continue focusing on in the months ahead. It’s become become the biggest focus for the Federal Reserve, even over inflation. I would argue that if the labor market wasn’t weakening, we might not have had rate cuts over the last few Fed meetings.
As you can see, the unemployment rate is still sitting below average but it seems to be slowly inching higher… this will be something to monitor.
“The end is near” gets far more attention and is much more interesting than “people are doing fine.” Especially now with AI being the center of the universe. Disaster, collapse, fear, and crisis are always going to draw clicks and engagement because people react faster and more intensely to threats. The problem is that this creates a persistent disconnect between headlines and reality for those who spend the majority of their time online. If you walk outside, life looks a bit better than you’d think. One thing I also noticed this weekend spending time with family and friends is that the sentiment towards AI is skewed very negative. Most people think of AI as the end of humanity and a shift toward Terminator. UBI, the end of jobs and mass unemployment, and robots taking over is the general consensus. People view AI leaders like Altman, Elon, Zuckerberg, Google, etc. as a group who wants to own/rule the world. Reality is that every single technological innovation has improved society for the better… I am willing to bet that in the end, AI will do the same.
In the remainder of this article I’m going to discuss my thoughts on the market as we head into 2026, some of my key focus names into the end of this year, my my favorite monthly charts, a few stocks I am looking to build positions in, the sleeper Black Friday winner nobody is mentioning, a new potentially explosive catalyst I’m seeing nobody discuss for a sector I’ve been harping on and think is setting up for a big move, a group of AI stocks I think presenting a potential opportunity, and more.
Let’s get into it.