Markets Launch a Strange New Year Beginning to 2026

Well, markets have just launched a strange beginning to this New Year of 2026. No, it's not what happened today. It's simple that fact the first day of the New Financial Year lands on a Friday, immediately followed by a weekend "off." Doesn't happen often, and doesn't allow for any of the usual suspects to make any "in-depth" prognostications for 2026 based on initial market action - although you shouldn't be surprised if they do anyway. After all, a blank page won't grab anyone's attention, and we wouldn't want to leave the suckers bereft of audio or video trinkets to keep them married to the markets, right?

Ideally, though, you're on to their game by now. And we hope you heed our occasional posts about just how hard Wall Street works to pick the pockets of regular folks by insisting that the only place to park your hard-earned dollars is in the stock market, with bonds a distant second choice.

So why waste a single day drilling home their message? - they must be thinking.

Still, the New Year has nevertheless begun. And with it, we'll all have to eventually don our prudent investor caps and decide whether our money is sitting where it should to weather the storm brewing in the coming days. 

Storm? Well, we've talked about why we can expect one - or perhaps more than one - many times. Of course, nothing of real consequence has visited our shores yet. And perhaps we've really entered the market Nirvana that have been prophesied over and over again every time markets grow to outrageously over-valued nose-bleed levels throughout history. If you're not familiar with all this, maybe it's time to get up to speed. Either that, or you may join the sitting ducks that the Wall Street Sharpshooters aim their rifles and shotguns at, all neatly lined up an a row as the storm hits and the real fun begins for them.

Well, enough of markets. After all, it's only been a day.

Instead we'll offer up what may perhaps be a bit of a stretched comparison between the Wall Street predators and those "woke folks" who insistently keep spitting out their nonsense, and do so even as the Christmas Season began (and continues, by the way). Yes, even Christmas is not beyond their poison pens and vitriolic videos.

While none of the following was really a surprise, still its jolting to read this sort of trash-talk as Christmas arrives and rolls on through its 12 days and beyond (for those who actually observe the "real" Christmas). While the Financial Folks noted above are not fools, these folks, though potentially lethal, really are fools, all gathered in a basket of woeful nonsense designed to dislodge the thinking caps of any rational man or woman (yes, that does exhaust the number of genders out there!).

This screed features someone named Simone Lacorbiniere. Not a familiar name? Good. After reading this, if you remain sane, you'll likely not waste even a second trying to discover it's source.

The author of this article isn't the aforementioned, but is commenting on their drivel. And he goes on to quote other "reliable" sources of woke nonsense in a similar vein. You can read the whole article HERE.) 

 

Santa is “an old white man [who] supervise[s] the elves’ work.” We can put aside that Santa was identified in “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (1823) as a  “chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf.” LaCorbinière portrays him as a heartless white capitalist living off the labor of a captive elf workforce. She calls for “Santa to work in the factory alongside the elves.”

Changes must be made, according to the museum, to decolonize Christmas and break away from holiday images that are “white, male and non-disabled”:

“This perpetuates the harmful ‘colonial gaze’. Non-Western cultures are ‘othered’. It says that the coloniser has the power to judge all people. And it ignores many communities’ histories and traditions. Telling the story like this teaches new generations that the coloniser knows best.”

Santa is not alone.

In the meantime, NPR noted White Christmas has racist undertones, while Joy Reid has declared Jingle Bells to be a racist song.

Even “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a “bigoted” story fed to the populace to reinforce capitalist and racist values. Professor James Deaville warned recently that “while some viewers see the ending as affirming community, the film also keeps George partly ignorant of how the forces of inequity are actually operating in his largely white community.”

 

With that we wish you all a Happy New Year. May you be awake rather than a-woke in the coming days. You'll surely be better equipped to deal with what's in store for us in 2026 if you are.

Happy New Year!