The Bear Market Nobody Is Prepared For VIEW IN BROWSER  | BY KEITH KAPLAN
CEO, TRADESMITH |
By the late 1990s, Apple already had a reputation for brilliance. Its engineers had built the Macintosh, helped spark the desktop-publishing boom, and redefined personal computing. Then a designer named Jony Ive stepped forward – and took Apple’s products, and its business, to the next level. Ive had a way of stripping an object to its essence. He sketched devices as if they were carved from a single block: clean lines, hidden screws, shapes so simple they felt inevitable once you saw them. It was a new design language, and it ran through Apple’s most iconic products – the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone. Ive showed how a great organization can become even greater when it partners with the right person at the right time. And at TradeSmith, we’re making our own version of that leap. We’ve had one of our strongest years ever – launching tools that track seasonality patterns in thousands of stocks… uncovering hidden value in the options market… and using AI to forecast short-term trading opportunities. Now, we’re teaming up with one of Wall Street’s most respected “quant” investors, Marc Chaikin, for another important breakthrough. Marc is a legend on Wall Street and a pioneer of the kind of data-driven analysis we excel at here at TradeSmith. His first day on Wall Street was Oct. 7, 1966. Back then, the term “quant investor” didn’t even exist. Today, Bloomberg and Reuters carry his Chaikin Money Flow indicator on their terminals. And hedge funds and banks around the world use it to spot shifts in institutional buying and selling pressure. Thanks to the success of these tools, Marc has advised Steve Cohen, George Soros, and Paul Tudor Jones – guys who don’t return your call unless you bring a real edge. Even more impressive, his public warnings about the 2020 crash, the 2022 bear market, and this year’s tariff shock all came before the damage hit. Now, he’s partnering with TradeSmith on what may be the most important prediction of his career. Marc says 2026 will be the Year of the Bear, with an average stock market loss of about 20%. And he warns that popular AI-related stocks – the kind that are flying high now – could get hit even harder. My mission as TradeSmith CEO is to make sure you have hedge-fund-level tools to help you spot opportunities and protect your downside risk. So, together with Marc, my team and I are launching a set of new tools to help you lock in gains… and avoid sudden losses… in the type of market he sees coming. It’s an advancement in investment tech that could save tens of thousands of dollars in potential losses when we reach the next market tipping point. I’ll get into more details in a moment. First, more on what makes Marc the perfect partner for TradeSmith and why, after years of AI-fueled euphoria, he sees a bear market coming in 2026. | Recommended Link | | | | What I’ve uncovered about the true impact of President Trump’s tariffs and DOGE initiative has left me deeply troubled. As someone who worked inside the Federal Reserve system and managed billions for America’s wealthiest families, I recognize the warning signs others miss. I urge you to see my urgent message immediately. The window for preparation isn’t just closing – it’s slamming shut. Watching this may be the most consequential few minutes you spend this year. |  | | The Perfect Partnership At TradeSmith, our mission is to take the kind of software tools elite money managers use – and put them in the hands of everyday investors. That’s why we built TradeStops 20 years ago. Instead of relying on emotions and gut feelings, it gave our subscribers a quantitative way to know when to sell their stocks based on their historical volatility. It’s also why we released our Seasonality software, our suite of options tools, and our Predictive Alpha AI-powered trading model. We want to give regular folks the kind of edge Wall Street takes for granted. And Marc’s career mirrors that mission. In 1966, he started on Wall Street with nothing but a phone, a notepad, and a desire to understand what truly drove stock prices. And he went on to build something few others have: a quantitative system trusted across the industry. Bloomberg and Reuters carry his Chaikin Money Flow on their terminals all over the world. Banks, hedge funds, and other institutional investors use it to measure where the big money is going and to react accordingly. Later, Marc built the Power Gauge. It’s a 20-factor model that evaluates stocks the same way institutions do: by blending fundamentals, technicals, and real-world money flows. 
Marc has also shared a series of timely predictions about the market with his more than 800,000 followers. And he’s helped them not only avoid big losses, but also capture big gains. - In early 2022, he sounded the alarm on the post-COVID bull run, just 90 days before stocks fell into a bear market.
- In early 2023, he said stocks were about to kick off an extraordinary recovery and shoot up 20% or more – right before the S&P 500 gained 26% that year alone.
- And earlier this year, he warned of a violent market shift, just before the S&P 500 plunged 19% following the Liberation Day tariffs.
Nobody has called the twists and turns of this market quite like Marc has. He’s worked on Wall Street for 50 years, survived 10 bear markets, built three new indexes for the Nasdaq, and created his own quantitative indicator that’s still used on Wall Street. I don’t know any other investor who matches his record. Now, he’s warning that another sudden drop is coming… one that will take a lot of bulls by surprise. 2026 – Year of the Bear Marc says 2026 will be a tipping-point year for the stock market. Not because of valuations… or sentiment… or anything you’ll hear about on CNBC. It’s because the stock market is entering a pattern that shows up again and again across more than a century of data. Based on his analysis, Marc puts the odds at 65% that this surprise downturn will begin by March 2026. And his concern isn’t just about the broad market. It’s about how uneven the returns on individual stocks will become. During the 2022 downturn, for example, the S&P 500 fell 20%. But because the stocks most investors were holding fell much farther, much faster, the average investor was down closer to 40%. That’s why Marc believes 2026 requires a different kind of playbook. One built for fast markets, sharp reversals, and sudden breakpoints. One that lets you step out early to avoid losses – and step back in again after sharp drops, before the crowd gets back in. That’s exactly what we designed our new sell-alert system to do. A New Kind of Alert for a New Kind of Market For years, I’ve pounded the table on the importance of using some form of stop loss. If you’re not familiar with the term, a stop loss is a line in the sand you set below a stock’s highest price. If the stock falls through that line, you sell automatically. It’s designed to protect your profits and prevent a drop from turning into a portfolio-wrecking loss. And the kind of “smart” stop losses we’ve developed at TradeSmith help you maximize your gains while keeping your winners from turning into losses. They’ve helped tens of thousands of investors stay in winners longer and avoid catastrophic wipeouts. But for the first time since I’ve been TradeSmith’s CEO, I’m telling you NOT to lean on our smart stops to protect you. They’re a powerful tool – but we didn’t engineer them for the kind of fast, reactive environment Marc expects in 2026. Instead, we’ve created a new kind of “early-warning system” built specifically for volatility shocks, fast trend breaks, and tipping-point conditions Marc sees ahead. It’s sensitive to even the slightest bearish tremor in a stock. You can set one up to monitor every stock you follow. If one of them begins to experience abnormal short-term volatility, you’ll automatically be alerted. In our backtests, you would have been able to get out of: - Freshpet (FRPT) before a 74% crash
- Lifetime Brands (LCUT) before a 77% crash
- Bloomin’ Brands (BLMN) before a 72% crash
- Funko (FNKO) before an 86% crash
- Rocky Brands (RCKY) before a 75% crash
- American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) before a 69% crash
- The Buckle (BKE) before a 21% crash
- Levi Strauss & Co. (LEVI) before a 49% crash
- Shoe Carnival (SCVL) before a 42% crash
- The Gap (GAP) before a 72% crash
- QVC Group (QVCGA) before a 99% crash
And if Marc’s prediction about 2026 is as accurate as his past calls, next year will be mainly about playing defense. You’ve got to protect your capital and recognize the stocks in your portfolio that are going to cause you problems. To do that effectively, you need a disciplined, quantitative approach. If you’re relying on your gut… news headlines… or “gurus” on social media to alert you to these drops, you’re not going to be able to keep up. And you’re not going to know when the next tipping point is coming for the stock market, either. That’s why I hope you’ll clear time in your schedule on Tuesday, Dec. 16, at 10 a.m. ET for our Tipping Point 2026 event. Marc will walk you through the data he’s looking at that led him to make his bear market call for 2026. And I’ll be showing you the groundbreaking new technology we’ve designed, developed, and meticulously tested to help you position yourself for what’s ahead. When you see what it can do for you… on any stock you own… you’ll understand it’s the best way to safeguard your holdings in 2026. Follow this link to secure your spot now. Sincerely, 
Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith P.S. As a thank-you for joining us on Tuesday, Marc and I will be sharing the name and ticker of a stock we believe every investor in America should steer clear of after Jan. 1. We’ll also share the ticker of a stock we believe every investor should buy before Jan. 1. And when you register, you’ll get immediate access to a trial version of our new sell-alert system. You can check on up to 10 tickers from your portfolio to see if it’s picking up on bearish tremors you should be aware of. Here’s that link again to secure your spot now. | 
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