More 2026 Predictions and The HowieTown Newsletter/Community - A Look Back and A Look Ahead

Good morning from Coronado…

I consider 2025 a great year. I turned 60 and Ellen turned 60. We are healthy and working hard to stay fit. Max and Rachel are also healthy and we have been focused on helping them live their best lives. I am not sure much else matters to be honest. I am so grateful.

I wrote less, but still often here from my Beehiiv newsletter HowieTown. Beehiiv sent me the numbers in their ‘Beehiiv Wrapped’. Here are some that stood out…

I doubt I could fill the Red Rocks amphitheatre on any one day but it’s cool to have the context. The readers of my newsletter are very influential and share it widely. The open rate of 46 percent is excellent (so I am told). The community around this newsletter is something I am very proud of so thank you!

My top three read and shared posts of 2025 were:

1.  A Reminder To live

2.  The Dumbest Week in American History - the dumber the better for the degeneracy and deglobalization trends…I imagine dumb is better than evil, but I worry evil and lawlessness is creeping in.

3.  Crypto Czar David Sacks…Resign

All three have aged well in my humble opinion. The soullessness of this White House merged with Silicon Valley stresses me out…but again wonderful news for the degenerate economy.

I have been too angry in 2025 despite a massive reduction in my Twitter usage (I deleted the app in 2024) and only use the desktop. Kramer coined ‘sereneity now’ as his Seinfeld mantra and I watched a lot of Seinfeld this year. When the YouTube algo is not serving me up enough good content for me in my evening media room unwinds, I head to Netflix for Seinfeld. We all need more silly in our lives.

My biggest personal goal for 2026 is to complete my third book which is focused on the rise of The Degenerate Economy as well as how to survive and thrive in it. I have a solid outline and plan.

My new weekly video/podcast ‘The Howard Lindzon Show’ with Michele Steele is just 3 shows in, but I am having fun doing most of the talking. My regular guest Michael Parekh will continue to join monthly at least to help me/us stay the course of this AI trend. The show is an extension of my book coming about ‘the degenerate economy’ and how to ride this trend so I will expand the regular guests to experts leading this trend in brokerage, prediction markets and ecommerce.

When I sent the first ‘cashtag’ ticker message to Fred Wilson from my Blackberry back in 2007 - ‘I love $RIMM’ - I had no inkling of the degenerate economy. My inkling was that the walls of institutions and markets were coming down. I was all in on the ‘real-time’ trend that I saw Twitter tipping us towards.

Twitter does not own real time anymore! Trump, The White House and the people in this orbit define true real time from Truth Social. We live now in a ‘post real time world’ of decentralized inside information and escalating greed (everyman for himself).

If I were to sum up the year 2025 and the degenerate economy- leaving out war and politics - it would be space, grift, everyman for himself, tariffs/inflation and prediction markets. There are no profits yet in space (but yes the stocks were spectacular) so I did not ride this trend directly. I made a rare later stage personal investment in prediction market leader Polymarket (through an SPV) and Polymarket is also a partner of Stocktwits.

I won’t argue about the economy with people. I see what I see from my own living, habits, travels and my spending. Life is expensive as we enter 2026, a good reason why my post ‘a reminder to live’ linked above was my most popular.

From this new cultural, technological, political and economic reality we are faced with this degenerate economy where speculation is both a necessity, a growth industry, a lifestyle and entertainment. This essay from an anonymous investor/trader on Twitter titled ‘The Prison Of Mediocrity’ was fantastic and went very viral on the subject of the degenerate economy. At first I was upset that I got no credit, but I quickly realized this is why this trend is so massive. Other smart investors and traders are starting to recognize the scale of this trend using terms I was was just making up just two years ago (If you do a simple Chat GPT asking for a summary of all my writings on this subject you get something similar - click here to read it )

As 2006 begins, the world deglobalizes/shrinks and battles for commodities/natural resources, a very light weight degenerate layer now sits on top/over all of these walls (investing, trading, predictions, crypto, stablecoins, speculation, futures, options, betting, parlays), with billions of people speaking a true universal language of price, volume and odds.

Do not shoot the messenger!

So what could go wrong in 2026?

Too many things can go wrong and guessing is futile.

My best guess is Inflation/affordability reaches a crisis mode. This is the wild card for markets and mood. The White House calls these terms a hoax though it was these terms (and the border) they ran on. The markets do not think it is a hoax and are pricing this all in via commodities as well as the valuation stretch for growth and speculation.

My goal is to be prepared for any, all or none these trends continuing, accelerating, peaking or disappearing in 2026.

Thanks again for showing up here, reading and sharing.

Happy New Year.