Executive Summary: I got the big picture right in 2025—no recession, a durable bull market and the payoff from foreign stocks. But my expectations for a market rotation and parts of the bond market missed the mark. Here’s a clear-eyed review of the calls, the misses and the lessons that carry forward.
The incentives in the world of financial punditry are badly skewed. The louder the voice and the bolder the claim, the more attention—and clicks—you’re likely to get. If you’re right (or even sort of right), you can trumpet the call endlessly. If you’re wrong, it hardly matters. Within 15 or 30 minutes, the market has moved on, memories fade, and you get another shot next year.
I’ve long held myself to a higher standard. Each year, I look back at my prior outlook—my forecasts for the year ahead—and take an honest accounting of what I got right and what I got wrong.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve shared my views on where I think we’re headed in 2026, along with a market and month-by-month review of 2025. To complete the exercise, it’s time to revisit my 2025 Outlook. Below, I quote directly from last year’s forecast and offer my own assessment.
As you’ll see, I got some things right and others … well, read on.
But those flags have been waving for two years, so I assume the economy will continue expanding next year.
The U.S. economy was notably resilient in 2025. Even the largest tariff increase in the past 100 years couldn’t tip the economy into a recession.
That’s not to say the tariffs were painless. They injected significant uncertainty into business plans and added plenty of noise to the data.