If you invest in the stock market right now, I'm about to show you could either make you a fortune or cost you everything you've worked for in 2026. 2026 is shaping up to be a once in a decade, maybe even lifetime opportunity, the kind where massive fortunes are made and massive fortunes are lost. The SP 500 has already surged 77% since October 2022, and it's positioned to surge another 20 to 30% in 2026. But, and this is critical, this exact pattern preceded every major market crash in modern history. We're talking about 2000, 2007, 2022, all over again. The difference, this time, you're going to see it coming because Winston back there has done all the research for you. So the market is literally about to hand you the biggest gains of the decade, followed by one of the most brutal corrections we've seen. By the end of this video, you know exactly how to position yourself to capture those massive 2026 gains by protecting yourself from the inevitable crash that follows. We'll learn the five warning signs to watch for, the exact strategy to profit for both scenarios, and most importantly, where to make you move. Now I'm gonna do one better for you. I'm gonna give you a full workbook, including the five warning signs, what they are, checklists and everything. That's completely free. That's in our free community at felixfriends.org slash resource. And if you're wondering who the heck I am, my name is Felix Bruin, I'm an ex-investor banker. I've seen how the big money really moves. And I've watched institutional investors make and lose a lot of money. And I'm also the founder of the GOAT Academy, where we've talked over 20,000 students so far. How to trade more like the institutions do. And I'm also the co-founder of TradeVision.io, where we track real-time market data, institutional flows, give you live news on your stocks. And there's a crazy Christmas sale going on over there. So check out the Tradevision.io Christmas offer for you. But this whole community is about one thing and one thing only, leveling the playing field between retail investors like you and the Wall Street Giants. So we teach regular people how to beat Wall Street up their own game. And today I'm going to show you a setup that mirrors 2000, 2007, 2022, the three biggest market tops of the last 25 years. This isn't speculation, this is pattern recognition based on decades of market data. What you do with that information could set you up for, well, whatever you want it to set you up for. If you want some help with that setup and how the institutions apply strategies, learn from real investment bankers, my mentors. Well, if you're serious about your money, book a free strategy call with us, learn more about our mentorship program, and to access that, including my million-dollar life trading experiment. You can book a call at feedexpense.org slash freedom. That is also free of charge and completely risk-free. Now, where are we? Since October, the market's gone absolutely banana. We're up 77% October 2022. A normal three-year period gives us about 30%. So we've done more than double that. Now, this doesn't automatically mean a crash is coming. And there's almost you would get wrong. You see these massive gains and they think, waiting for a crash, panic. But that's actually not how markets work. Bull markets can run hot for years. In fact, if you look at the last 40 years of market history, about 50% of our time we were in multi-year bull runs. The 90s saw nine-year bull markets. The 2010 saw an 11-year bull market. So the fact that we've gone up fast doesn't mean we're about to crash. The real question is, will we crash because we went up fast? No. That's not the real question. The real question is, what fundamentals are driving this rally and what will make them break? So we're going to unpick in the next few minutes. Now people are going to talk to you about PE ratios. They're going to say, oh, the market PE right now is, they're going to say the market PE right now is about 28. That's crazy and so on. But that doesn't matter. Historically, the average PE has been lower, yes, 16 to 17 historic. It's a bit of a premium. But it doesn't matter once you understand what's driving this rally. There are two parts to that. One is the obvious that everybody talks about, but I'm going to run you through that anyway, just so you don't miss any of it. And then I'm going to tell you the not so obvious, which is what institutional money is watching. So the rocket fuel everyone's talking about is, well, AI infrastructure spending, right? We know that. You know, it's massive, yes. In 2026, global spending on AI infrastructure is projected to hit 400 to$500 billion. So that's a lot of money, right? Semiconductors, power grid expansion, the whole stuff. Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta, they're driving most of that. They're planning about$280 billion of that expenditure. Second, we've got the Fed. The Fed's going to cut, right? Trump's going to point a Fed chair so a Fed poodle, which one's right, I'm not sure. And they're going to cut rates, right? Progressively, we would imagine, because that's the whole point of this. Why do red cuts matter? Well, they make borrowing cheaper for companies and for you. So you spend more, the companies can invest more. And either way, companies make bigger profits, which means higher stock prices, most likely. And then number third, that's you. We're counting on you, the retail investor FOMO. The fear and greed index sits at greed right now. And typically that means the retail money starts to pour in because we can go higher, we can go more extreme. But what happens is that the people who've sat out 2025, and they're still all those people. Yes, they're still those people, they're going to start piling in. So they're going to see they're made, this made making money, and they're going to, you know, they're going to start to put money in. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. More buyers push prices up and so on. It's it's it's you know the prediction. So my prediction for 2026, we're gonna be up somewhere between, I don't know, 20, 25, 30 percent. Um, and that could be by mid or late 2026. I suspect it's gonna come before the midterms. That'll be a complete coincidence, by the way. The government obviously does not manipulate the stock market to win elections. That would be absurd, wouldn't it? And and and then more risky stocks could actually deliver much bigger returns than that. So it's a it's a it's gonna be a beautiful market. Now, before we get to the crash part, because there'll be a crash at some point. There are three hidden forces that have been driving stock prices higher. And that Wall Street talks about it, but I don't really see this much talked about in mainstream media or on YouTube because it's sort of a bit more out there. But these forces, these buyers, don't care about PE multipliers. They don't care about valuations, they just keep buying no matter what. The first of these secret forces are index funds. And do you own an index fund? Yes or no? You put it in the chat down the diet. Even if you said no, you probably do. Your pension fund most certainly does. Um, so your 401k or whatever certainly has it in it. And they buy the stocks that are in the SP 500, right? So you buy an ETF like Vu or something like that, and it'll buy 500 companies, does not care what they're worth, because those 500 are in the SP 500. It can be super overvalued, they still have to buy it. But most of that money actually flows into the top 10 companies. Why does that happen? Well, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon, they get the line share of every dollar that flows into the index fund because they're the biggest stocks. So there's this constant buying pressure on the biggest stocks which pushes them even higher. The second force is corporate buybacks. This year, companies bought one trillion dollars of one trillion dollars of their own shares. Nothing to do with fundamentals. When a company buys back its own stock, what happens? Less shares available. Less shares, same profits, means PE looks better. It looks like there is profit growth. Must be worth more, right? That's how companies pump their own stock. Now, why do they do this? Well, the cynic in me would say that CEOs in C-suite are paid in stock options and they make more money if their stock prices is high, especially just before their options vest. Now, there's research out there that would show a very odd coincidence that these buybacks are often timed with just before C-suite's stock options vests. I'm sure it's a complete coincidence because, of course, the great and good American corporate world would not pump their own stock price for their own personal gain, right? Don't think such thoughts. It's naughty. That's the second. So those guys are going to buy their own stocks. And again, who is the biggest buyback and buyer? It's the top 10 stocks. So again, you've got the top 10 stocks there. And then you've got something that's a little bit more opaque. Have you ever got an option? Some of you might have bought a call option, right? When you buy an option, who do you think sells it to you? Good question, right? Well, there's somebody who creates it and sells it to you. And that somebody is called a market maker. They are the people who look out for the interests of the little guy. Sitterdow, you know, Suskayana, those kind of guys. Now, they have just sold you an option, which means that they have just made a trade where they're saying the market's going to go down. So they now have risk. They eliminate that risk by hedging. And how do they hedge? They buy the index. So it creates more buying pressure, pushes prices higher. It's a trifold mechanical process. Market makers don't care about valuations, they're just managing risk, right? The buyback guys don't care about valuations, they just care about their stock options. And the index funds don't care because they have to buy when money flows into index funds, which happens passively, especially through the pension contribution system. So it's not about fundamentals anymore. It's about mechanical buying. But when the market turns, these same forces can work in reverse. Index funds have to sell. Buybacks, okay, they're still there. But if companies have less money, they'll buy less. And options, the hedging will flip to sell. And that's when things turn ugly very, very so we talked about what makes 2026 a beautiful year. And by the way, I'm very heavily invested right now. I'm very, very bullish. All of our institutional indicators are very aggressive right now. And again, you want to get potentially access to that. And our mentoring, uh, book yourself a free call at FelixFriends.org slash freedom. But the party will end. Every party ends, no matter how good it is. It might be at two in the morning, at four in the morning, at six in the morning, it might continue on the next day, it might last all bloody weekend, but at some point the hangover is gonna get you. So the question is when and how bad will it be? Well, let's look at what would trigger a market crash. And then you will have the five ingredients that you can watch for to know what to do. Now, I think there's a simpler thing to look at. I'll share that with you in a second, but you want to understand the fundamentals first. First, if we are going to weakening labor market, you know, unemployment is higher than it's been at any time since 2021. Maybe the data is better, maybe it's not. Don't really care. It doesn't look great. It doesn't look terrible, but it doesn't look great. So unemployment goes up, people tend to spend less money. When people spend less money, companies make less profits, right? When companies make less profits, they have more workers, you get you get the uh you get the idea, right? It's this vicious little, vicious little beast of a circle. But then they are gonna lower interest rates, so you know, we might just be fine. What about the second part? Stagflation. What the heck is that? That means your growth is slow with rising unemployment as we have at the moment, and inflation remains stickily above target. So say inflation remains at wherever it is right now, 2.8% or something like that, and your GDP growth is neither here nor there. Then what do you do? You can't cut rates because you've got inflation. You can't stimulate the economy because you've got inflation. Right? You get the idea? That's probably the worst case scenario, stagflation. Government can't spend much more money, they're already spending two trillion extra that they don't have every single year. So that's a risk. Now, having a half a trillion dollars flowing into infrastructure spending from AI, that's a lot of money. That could give us some decent economic growth, so maybe this won't happen. Third, we have extreme valuations, and this is what a lot of people are talking about right now, right? The PA ratio of the SP is 28, historically it is much lower. So say companies' earnings, their profits start to disappoint. Well, that would become a problem. So when video comes out and says we grew at only 30% and we were expecting 60, ah, now stock prices are gonna fall. What's gonna happen then? People are gonna sell the index funds. The index funds have to sell. And when the index funds sell, what do they sell? They'll sell the top 10 stocks, right? So now people panic as everybody owns the top 10 stocks, so they sell even more, and then the index funds have to sell more, and then you know, you you get the idea. And we've seen this movie before, by the way. 2000. The SP hit 30 in the PAE ratio, it then dropped by 50%. Uh, don't mean to spoil your holidays, but you know, it can happen. In 2021, it hit 30, it then dropped 25%. So, how do I see 2026 playing out? I think we're gonna get a euphoric half. First half of the year, gonna be a big market surge, everyone's making money. Middle of 2026, maybe a little bit later, maybe just after midterms, pure coincidence, no politics, of course, involved there. Unemployment might tick higher or be allowed to tick higher because employment data is whatever you want it to be. Earnings guidance might start to get cut a little bit. And the inflation might still be there because they're going to cut interest rates. And therefore, the end of the year or in early 2027, the reality might hit that maybe we just partied a little bit too hard. Maybe we need to have a laydown. And that isn't a doom and gloom scenario. That's just the cycle of the market, right? The market moves like this. So, what do you want to do? Well, two options. You can just stay in the whole thing and enjoy it, or you can figure out some sort of way where you can take the good bits and you can skip the worst bits, uh, which is what we aim to do by following institutional trading strategies. Again, you want to learn more about that, you know what to do. Book yourself a call. Felixfriends.org slash freedom. It's a freedom call. It's like um liberation day without the crash. So let me give you five warning signs so that when you see like three or four or five of these flashing red at the same time, it might be time to get defense. The first three, I want to take notes, is speculation going parabolic. I'm talking meme stock, spacks, dog-themed cryptocurrencies, all the crazy stuff. When people say this time it's different, this, you know, buttcoin will make me a billionaire. That's when you might think, hmm, I think I've seen this movie before. And then they're going to go up 100% and 200 and 500% in a few weeks, and again, that's a sign. It means, well, the dumb money is the last to move in. That's just the reality, and the dumb money tends to chase pretty dumb stuff. Um, not saying the smart money is any smarter, but it's just the reality really of it. The second is massive gains. So if you think, if everyone says, oh, well, look, I only made 40% last year, isn't that terrible? You know, again, we're near the top because people have normalized crazy returns. The market historically has done about 8 to 10%, not 30 or 40 or 50. That's number two. Number three is margin debt. As I'm recording this, there's about$1.2 trillion in margin debt. That's people who have borrowed to buy a stock. Now, don't do that. That's what I'd say to you. Unless you have extraordinarily sophisticated risk management, margin is gonna bite you in the backside. Because when it goes down, it goes down twice as fast. And you need to come up with the cash, otherwise, you're gonna have to sell. And guess where you're gonna have to sell? You're gonna have to set up the bottom of the market, the exact point where you actually would like to be buying. But the problem is that with 1.2 trillion in margin, and the market goes down, all those guys have to unwind their margin, and 1.2 trillion will disappear from the market very, very quickly. The fourth thing is there is a great thing out there, probably the only great thing that CNN has ever done, and it's called the fear and greed index. Right now, it's a it's a scale, right? It's sort of a scale, a bit like a card dial type thing. Right now it's sitting at about 56, as I'm recording this. That's greed, not extreme greed. It can hit like 80 or 90. But there's also another way to look at it. When your Uber driver is giving you stock picks, everybody at parties is talking about how much money there is in making stocks. When everybody's an expert, the top is near. It's a little harder for me nowadays because people always come to me and talk to me about stocks. So I'm like, are you talking about stocks because the market's overvalued? Are you talking about stocks because you think I know something about stocks? That's that's there's a problem for me. But like another way, when Winston starts talking about stocks back there, that's really when we're in trouble. The other thing, Brett, I would actually put that in square brackets just because of the nature of the index fund flow. I would maybe take that out. I think there's some point to it, but I think let's simplify this and take it out. So all of that, by the way, is in the workbook, it's in the free community, so you can just download that. So what's the strategy? Like the simplest thing to do is just the dollar cost average into the index, which is buy vo or spy or whatever, and just do it every week, every Monday. You're good, or every month, or whatever, but it's more often better. You can't stop. You're never allowed to stop, ever. Especially in crashes. Um, a little bit more sophisticated would be to have some cash reserves on the side and then try to go in when the market crashes. You might also want to start adding some defensive stocks when these things get triggered. Um, and and defensive stocks to me would be anything at the moment that is non-AI. Um, how to find? Well, actually, no, there are plenty of companies out there that are not AI related. And I would strongly suggest you eliminate any margin in your broker unless you have some extraordinary risk management signal, um, which I do think we actually have, but mostly with an understanding. I'd be very happy to teach it to you, but mostly with an understandard. And when your mean stock goes up, you know, 100% in three days, don't have to sell it, because I always say don't sell your losers, your winners, rather. Um, but at the very least, set a bloody trailing stop so that when this thing goes to I don't know, 90 or 80%, it sells and you lock in the gains, because otherwise it's going to go back down and it'll be at minus 80% before you can say kumbaya, right? So please, please, please be smart about that. Don't say you're wing us early, but you want to have at least a trailing stop on there. You're going to want to have written rules if you're more of an active investor. And I would strongly recommend you adopt a systematic approach, which is what Wall Street does, which is what we teach. It removes your emotions, it makes you a rules-based beast, which is what I'm doing at the moment, but I'm doing always, but at the moment I'm running a particular experiment where I'm running a million dollar of my own money following purely the system. And it's a Wall Street system. And on the back testing, it's done extraordinarily well. But back tests are imperfect, very much so. So I'm testing it with my own money. And you can watch with me, you can learn with me, you can um see the whole thing if you wish. How do you do that? Well, start by booking a free call with us and a chat with my team, see if this might be the right thing for you, the zero pressure, zero obligation, and go to freedogsfrents.org slash food. If you got some value out of this video, well, share it with somebody else who might get some value out of this. So not everybody is a, you know. The problem with the COVID crash is a lot of people just forgot the lesson, right? They then just went all in on the mean stocks, which was great for a while, and then they lost most of that money when it collapsed. And that's avoidable. You don't have to give the money back. Wall Street would like you to, but it is a it is an option. It is your option. So your option is really for 2026, 2027. Do I want to um temporarily make money and then hand it all back to Wall Street, or do I want to keep the money? Uh the choice is yours. Winston says, uh, be smart about it. It's lying there behind the under the table. I wish you a glorious start of 2026. May all your dreams come true. May it be some of the most glorious, splendid, and successful for you. But I think for those things to become true, you need to change what you're doing. Whatever you're doing right now, you need to change it. Otherwise, you're very likely to get the same outcomes. And I appreciate the market's been very good for us the last two or three years, but it won't always do that. And we're gonna get a repeat of the COVID post COVID crash and guaranteed. And you want to be in a better position to act on that and actually make money out of it rather than lose money out of it. There we are. All the best.