Episode summary
The 2025 Wrap Up: Tariffs, AI and Key Market Trends for 2026 | WSJ's Take On the Week
The Journal
· · 32 min · Hosts: Telis Demos, Aaron Back · Guests: David Wainer
Summary
AI demand was the dominant market force in 2025, with memory and storage suppliers Western Digital, Seagate and Micron among the year’s biggest winners. The host and David Wainer argued that the AI buildout is not just about chips: exabytes of storage, data-center power, and related infrastructure all became major profit pools, while Robinhood benefited from a surge in retail trading and the broader gamification of finance. A bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery also lifted the entertainment company, and both guests leaned toward Paramount ultimately prevailing.
On the downside, the episode emphasized that many laggards reflected idiosyncratic company problems or sectors left behind by AI. Fiserv was hit by a sharp reset in expectations, Molina Healthcare was pressured by rising health-care costs and subsidy uncertainty, and Alexandria Real Estate Equities suffered from the downturn in biotech. Consumer names including Deckers, Lululemon, Chipotle, Cava and Sweetgreen also struggled as tariffs, shifting tastes and a more cautious consumer weighed on demand.
Looking ahead to 2026, the conversation centered on four big themes: tariff rollbacks, AI power constraints, health-care pricing and credit risk tied to AI infrastructure financing. The guests said the market will keep orbiting the same macro forces, even if the individual winners and losers change.
Key takeaways
- The host said the key 2026 question is how much tariffs are rolled back, with the Supreme Court potentially reshaping the Trump administration’s tariff regime.
- David Wainer said AI-related power demand could become a binding constraint, citing data-center energy needs and the risk that the U.S. cannot add generation fast enough.
- Wainer argued that obesity drugs will be a major 2026 story as Lilly and Novo Nordisk move pills into the market and expand coverage.
- The guests said health-care insurers are facing broad pressure from delayed care, GLP-1 usage and hospital pricing power, which should keep premiums rising.
- The host said credit default swap prices on Oracle and CoreWeave debt signal that AI financing risk is moving into credit markets.
Notable quotes
“I think the thing to watch in 2026 is the degree to which tariffs are rolled back”
“a lot of that's going to AI data centers basically”
“I think the space will continue to grow, but it's it's going to be an interesting one to watch”
“we're going to see pills be introduced to the market”
How the episode opens
I I hate to say it because it was already such a big story in 2025. I think the thing to watch in 2026 is the degree to which tariffs are rolled back. Welcome back to WSJ's Take on the Week.
I'm Telus Deemos. We've got a special episode today. We're taking on the year.
We're taking on 2025, the year that was, and 2026, the year that is just kicking off. And I'm joined by a couple of special guests to do so. Uh, listeners to this show may remember Aaron Back, editor of Herd on the Street.
Welcome, Aaron.
Hello. Good to be back. — And we're joined for the first time by David Waner, also of Herd on the Street. Welcome, David. — Thank you. It's great to be here. — David, what do you what do you do? What do you write about? What do you do?
I write for Herd on food, healthcare, um, travel to some extent. Basically, the things you enjoy and the things you put in your body.
That's good. All right. So, everybody everybody does a little bit of those things at least once or twice a year.
Uh, all right. So, we're going to we've got a couple of parts of this episode. First, we're going to look at what worked and what didn't in 2025.
We're going to look at the winners and losers in the S&P 500. Then, we're going to answer some of your feedback. You know, we've been asking the audience for things that they want to know about in 2026.
So, we're going to tackle some of those questions. We got some great interesting thoughts on that. And then, uh we've got a couple of uh got a couple of hot takes for 2026.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- ai memory storage demand
- tariffs
- us treasuries
- healthcare costs and medicare/medicaid
- glp-1 obesity drugs
Companies and tickers mentioned
- STX
- WDC
- MU
- HOOD
- NFLX
- PARA
- MOH
- DECK
- LULU
- Seagate Technology
- Western Digital
- Micron Technology
- Robinhood
- Netflix
- Paramount
- Warner Bros. Discovery
- Fiserv
- Molina Healthcare
- Life Sciences REIT
- Deckers Outdoors
- Lululemon
Watch the episode
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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