It now appears we are going to have a rough opening in the morning. Expect a 1% drop or more on the S&P and Small Cap at 9:30. I do not think big money players are happy with this latest move by the United States.

Tomorrow, the US markets will be closed, including the pre-market session.

So far 2026 has been favorable for us, but we have a couple of indexes that are not cooperating and should give us some concern. We also got some new tariff news, and I waited deliberately to post this blog so I could see the initial response. I find it fascinating that most of these tariff and conflict announcements occur after 4 PM on Friday, when the markets are closed, as if “someone” is aware of their potential impact on the markets.

This week when I show you our charts, you are going to see a gray box that shows what progress prices have made since they peaked in October 2025. I will also choose the low point before the year’s end to form the box and show what indexes may be lower than 2025.

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The first full week of 2026 is in the books, and it appears that nothing is going to stop this train from rolling down the tracks. Should we fear that a shocking rollover is inevitable? Are there any signs that our indexes are showing that might give us a clue?

Let’s take a look.

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How will the premarket react after the Venezuela hit, capture, and removal of their leader? I have been doing some reading and scanning, and currently there appear to be no knee-jerk responses. A surprising new tool out there is to see what Bitcoin is doing because it never closes. Right now price is up 1%.

Lastly is to just read some news channels and even Twitter accounts. Currently, I see nothing dramatic coming.

Now to our charts:

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I have been trying to figure out what to call this post because I want to tell you about something new, report on the status of this blog, and also break precedent and give you some actual cash numbers. I normally report percentages only.

I have been running this blog since February 2008. It began because I got burned in 2000 during the dot-com crash. A second burn followed in 2008 during the housing crash. I have self-taught myself through some good times and some very bad times. There are two primary things that I have learned. You must learn to trade using real money. Trading with play money never teaches the lesson that the market is always right no matter your opinion. I have tweaked and changed how I approach entries and exits more times than I can remember, but the changes came from trading. I know at least one of my members thinks I am a high-risk trader, but I am here to tell you I can be too conservative.

My annual goal: I target a 7% annual return and no 12-month period running that has a double-digit loss.

Looking on the side of my blog post page, I post my running numbers that I keep in a spreadsheet, and they are live. As you can see, I have primarily met my goal. My methods will never give you the best returns, but my methods will protect your capital. You need a method that won’t drive you insane, and it must be as mechanical as possible to remove emotion. Emotions, money, and trading can force you to make large mistakes.

I used to run this blog for myself only, and over time, the people I worked with started following the page. I retired from my primary job in 2017 and decided by the end of 2017, I would be closing this blog. Nearly all of you who are still here are the same ones who asked me to keep running it. I considered it and came up with a solution: if you would help pay the cost of running the blog, I would continue.

In January 2018, I asked for $10 a month or $110 a year. Costs have risen, and membership has declined. I do not promote or ask anyone to join this page. I will say that running this page helps me stay sharp and on top of all things financial.

At the beginning of 2026, the rates for this page will be the same. I don’t operate it for financial gain. We still have enough paying members to cover the cost of the domain name, Host(Greengeeks), Wishlist, Twillo, Updraft, Google storage, and lastly, taxes.

There is a menu change on the blog if you have not already noticed. I moved Dix-safe to the Dix-mix section to make room for my Dividend page. I spent the entire year of 2025 learning, tweaking, and still tweaking to come up with a system that balances capital and dividend gains. There is a very long write-up under that tab if you are interested. This page provides a brief explanation: if you are withdrawing money from your TSP and do not need it, you can either spend it on anything you like or invest it to generate more income. Despite some silly mistakes, I have found the learning process to be fascinating, and I still managed to achieve a profit.

Here is one perk that I see coming with my dividend education. If down the road I close my TSP account, I will no longer have a G-fund to bail out to. I could use my top monthly paying dividend stock to supplement my account when stocks are a sell.

I always give you guys percentage gains and losses mainly because I do not think I should be giving out for the world to see my actual account values. But I am going to give you some raw numbers so you can see that my goal of 7% a year will work if you stay with it. You have to have the discipline. At least check your accounts once a month.

This is not bragging, because really it is not all that impressive when you consider some professional traders make a living trading stocks. What you never hear, though, is how much time they spend doing a week. I will bet you it is a minimum of 80 hours a week.

Since 2018 I have withdrawn $405,000. I have also paid my Social Security for the years of 62, 63, and 64. My TSP has continued to grow in value by 4% from 2018 to 2025. Please take a moment to consider this. The money that I withdrew has been free. Do you see it?

Yes, My TSP account from 2018 to 2025 would have grown substantially more if I would not have touched it, but that is not the point. I managed to touch it and still make it grow. Some of it is luck, and some is hard work. Why luck? There is no way that I could do this in a year like 2022, where most of the time you are in the G-fund. But you are not looking to be perfect or make tons of money each day, month, or year. What you are attempting to do is to be consistent.

As you can see, 2022 was a rough year to turn a profit. I did not turn a profit with my TSP. I would have to do some digging, but I think 2022 was the worst year since the 2008-2009 time frame.

In closing, I want to thank all of you that have stuck it out through the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly. Always stay open to a new plan because life is always evolving. Never give up and become mired in your old habits because life may become easier in the future thanks to someone or something new. There is never going to be “ONE PLAN” that works for any one person or family. You have to find a plan that fits you and makes you comfortable. I share my moves and plans to give you an alternative or comparison for your plan.

Happy New Year to everyone! Let’s hope that 2026 will bring us a gain of 7% or more, and that it will be achieved without any drama.

It has been a positive year with our TSP and the stock market.

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I will tweak my setup going into 2026. The last three months saw little progress moving higher. Below, I will show you what our indexes have done this week, show a comparison of the last three months, and explain what my move will be.

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It’s difficult to believe that another year has passed, yet here we are. On Tuesday, I will post any tweaks that I make going into the new year. There is not a lot to say about our current charts with the exception of the S&P 500.

So let’s hop right to it.

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I wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.

I do have one chart to show this evening because it is good for us.

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We got some relief this week, but we still have an index that is down for the month of December. I don’t expect much of a return for the month of December because the news circulating on AI, possible war, the cost of living, and unemployment makes big money players pause investing in the future. Regardless of the perspective, we follow the lead of the large money managers, primarily aiming to capitalize on their momentum. It took me a long time to figure out that no matter how smart you think you are, you cannot beat the big players if they turn against your position.

2025 is coming to a close quickly. We have 6 full days of trading left and one partial day. I am not seeing any special events for the last days of 2025, so hopefully we will float higher. Expect volume to be lower than normal.

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