Ideas
Central banks favor gold over US assets.
Gold's rally can continue because central banks and sovereign wealth funds are likely to make incremental allocations away from US assets amid geopolitical and capital-war risk, and gold is the natural alternative when Treasuries are less desired; one-day gold rallies also correlate with geopolitical messiness.
Morgan Stanley wealth management drives EPS growth.
Morgan Stanley is crushing it: EPS has stepped up from $4.47 average in 2016-2020 to $7.50 from 2021 onward, driven by wealth management, with net new assets rising from $580B in 2016-2020 to $1.6T in 2021-2025; acquisitions like E*TRADE and Parametric let it funnel clients into higher-value wealth products better than peers.
BlackRock likely dominates private markets asset management.
BlackRock has won asset management with $700B of net new assets, nearly 150 products over $1B of flows, and a base fee run rate 35% above 2024; the biggest fee delta is private markets after HPS/GIP, and as private markets standardize, BlackRock is a good bet to be one of the dominant platforms.
Netflix sold; would buy lower.
Netflix won the streaming wars but now faces YouTube/Alphabet as the final boss with lower content costs and greater resources; watch hours are up only 2% and library viewing is declining, and the stock's 35% drawdown makes the 'needs Warner Bros' narrative overdone. Josh sold after a bad technical candle but would buy lower, saying he'll back up the truck if it falls below 80.
Small-cap outperformance may signal risk-on.
Russell 2000 has outperformed the S&P for 12 consecutive sessions, a 7.3% spread that is one of the largest since 2000; this could be a risk-on broadening signal, and in a long bull market bulls deserve the benefit of the doubt, though he remains open-minded that it may not be all good.
Small-cap strength is likely rebalancing noise.
The recent small-cap outperformance is likely just new-year rebalancing and another oscillation, not a change in market character; large caps trend while small caps oscillate, so he is not chasing the Russell 2000 and needs months of sustained relative strength before believing it.
Energy sector set to triple weight.
The Mag 7 breakdown is bullish because money gets bored of trades that stop working and rotates into new leadership; he expects energy to go from about 2% of the stock market to 6% this year, triple its proportion, as investors rotate out of mega caps and into working trades.
S&P can do fine without Mag 7.
Even if the last three years' mega-cap leadership stalls and Microsoft sits out 2026, the S&P 500 can still have a good year because new areas of the market step up; he does not need old leadership to keep the index working.
ServiceTitan is underappreciated vertical software compounder.
ServiceTitan is a new personal portfolio holding and an underappreciated long-duration compounder: it is an operating system for residential and commercial trades, early in adoption, with high switching costs once contractors use its scheduling, dispatch, billing, payments, and CRM; it grew revenue 25% to $250M, has over 110% net dollar retention, 80% platform gross margin, and the software/AI-driven selloff is overdone.
Toast remains a multi-year favorite stock.
While making the ServiceTitan case, Josh calls Toast another one of his favorite stocks for the next few years, implying similar attraction to sticky vertical software and payment platforms.
Only individual stock he still owns.
Michael has aggressively sold his individual stock portfolio but says IMAX is the only single stock he still owns, implying he is maintaining that holding; he plans to explain more in coming weeks.
Avoid software until sellers dry up.
Software is in a marketwide downside rerating, the worst in 25 years; Salesforce is a Dow component looking horrific, Adobe looks the same, and ServiceNow is puking. He is not buying the falling knife and considers these names in the penalty box until there is a higher low or sellers dry up.
This The Compound News video, published January 20, 2026,
features Josh Brown, Michael Batnick
discussing GLD, MS, BLK, NFLX, IWM, XLE, SPY, TTAN, TOST, IMAX, IGV, CRM, ADBE, NOW.
12 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers:
Josh Brown,
Michael Batnick
· Tickers:
GLD,
MS,
BLK,
NFLX,
IWM,
XLE,
SPY,
TTAN,
TOST,
IMAX,
IGV,
CRM,
ADBE,
NOW
