If the first two weeks of 2026 are anything to go by, this year is going to be a rocky one. If it were a free trial, I certainly wouldn’t be willing to pay full price for the monthly subscription.
But life is not like Amazon Prime or Apple TV, so on we march.
There have been myriad events already to start the year. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is being criminally investigated over his testimony to Congress on the central bank’s refurbishment; the US has taken over the running of Venezuela after abducting president Nicolás Maduro; and president Donald Trump continues to spark international unrest with talks of acquiring fellow NATO country Greenland.
Closer to home, defections from the Conservative party to Nigel Farage’s Reform are becoming more prevalent, while the Labour government continues to struggle in office. Seemingly out of nowhere, the Green party is surging in the polls, leaving the prospect of two novice parties (Reform and Green) vying for government in the next election.
Staying in the political sphere, Japan is to host a snap election. While prime minister Sanae Takaichi is doing so from a position of strength (as her party’s approval ratings are at their highest in a decade), she only holds a slim majority and there are no guarantees of victory this time around.
This is all against a backdrop of war in Ukraine, precarious economies the world over and the renewed threat of trade wars between the US and other countries.
Yet despite all this, markets are unperturbed. US stocks? Up. UK stocks? Up. European stocks? Up. Emerging markets? Up. Japan? Up.
It could therefore be a year where we have to compartmentalise. On the one hand we can panic, fear and voice concern about what is happening around us. But when it comes to how we invest, we shouldn’t let this thought process take over.
This was much the same in 2025. Despite a year in which everything seemed like it could fall apart, everything ended the year on a high.
As the news events and policies that dominated the first half (highlighted by Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’) began to fade (or in some cases be walked back) in the second half, it ended up being a strong 12 months for markets.
Behavioural investing is one of the most difficult to get right, yet it is always worth reminding ourselves that what we feel is personal and not always replicated by others – particularly when it comes to markets.
Does Trump know what he is doing? Will prime minister Keir Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves still hold their positions by the end of the year? Will the Russia-Ukraine conflict end? Will China invade Taiwan? Will trade war rhetoric reignite?
Who knows.
But if last year has taught us anything, it is that markets are a different beast to the politics of the day. Currently, investors don’t seem to care, or are at least far more sanguine about what is going on in the world than the headlines being written.
So, for now, there seems to be little need to hide money under the bed, divert to a doomsday portfolio, or move to the countryside and start rearing chickens and cows for a future in which we go back to a barter economy.
Whether that will be the case at the end of the year remains to be seen, but staying calm and focusing on what markets care about will be as important in 2026 as it was in 2025.