Weekly Market Outlook 1/11/2026
Robotics, autonomous vehicles, oh my.
I hope you’re all having a great start to 2026! It’s a new year, so we have a clean slate and it’s time to turn the page from 2025.
Just a heads up, I have decided to change the title of these Sunday articles because I don’t think “The Upcoming Week” was appropriate due to the sheer amount of information covered. I cover far more than just the upcoming week in these Sunday articles, so I decided to change it up. I think this title is more fitting considering the content included in these articles.
The first week of 2026 has concluded, and it’s been as crazy as one could have expected.
We already have plenty of stocks with YTD gains that would suffice for an entire year, it’s been that good.
A few stocks that have already advanced 30% or more to start 2026:
AVAV (2026 thematic basket)
ACMR (on the 2026 list)
AMKR (on the 2026 list)
BE (on the 2026 list)
EOSE (on the 2026 list)
FIGR
FLY (2026 thematic basket)
KRMN (2026 thematic basket)
KTOS (2026 thematic basket)
SKYT (on the 2026 list)
SMR
SNDK
USAR
Insane gains from plenty of stocks this year, many of which I highlighted in my 2026 Market Outlook and included in thematic baskets or in my 2026 individual name list!
Before we get into this article, I want to highlight and mention that my 2026 Market Outlook was published last weekend, I’ll link it here. In this article I discuss how I’m thinking about the market and indices heading into the new year, my top individual stock and trade ideas for 2026, the themes I’m focused on and the specific names within them including thematic baskets you can own or trade, macro and micro analysis, key index levels, crypto, sector and industry breakdowns, international stocks, and more. It’s a big piece, but I think it’s well worth the read. I put my all into this outlook to help you prepare for the upcoming year, and I hope you find it useful. As you can see from the names +30% or more to start the year, many of the names highlighted in this article are firing to start the year…
One thing is clear to start the year, money is flowing into higher beta and smaller-mid caps as investors are looking for downstream beneficiaries of AI. The leaders of tomorrow are often small-mid cap names today. With AI giving small caps a chance to scale faster than ever, the window to catch the next $50B+ names while they’re still sitting around $10B is likely right in front of us.
We have seen high short positioning, record low exposure, and very low valuations across small-mid caps. Not only that, but as I’ve said before, lower rates means smaller cap companies have easier access to capital which they can invest in AI. These smaller cap names will take big risks, some will see gigantic rewards and breakthroughs. AI gives these companies leverage they’ve never had before:
- Faster product development
- Lower cost experimentation
- Access to insights that used to require massive teams and budgets
That can’t be overstated enough. I would expect this theme and narrative to continue as we move throughout the year.
We also saw the “run it hot” narrative get even hotter as the Trump administration directed their representatives to buy $200B in mortgage bonds in hopes this increases home affordability headed into midterms in November. Not only that, but over the weekend Trump said he is planning an executive order that caps credit card interest rates at 10% for an entire year. These are all clear indicators that inflation has been placed on the back burner and instead, growth and economic activity is the priority.
There is a lot to walk through as we wrap up the first week of 2026.
In the remainder of this article I’m going to discuss a new robotics stock with ties to multiple themes and narratives, a theme I see percolating beneath the surface after being dormant for some time, my favorite weekly charts, the broader market and major indices, two stocks with imminent catalysts that look ready to move higher after months of consolidation, the biggest takeaways, themes, and focus names coming out of CES 2026, and more.
Let’s get into it.