New York, New York
— January 6, 2026

During my time at Amazon and Oracle, I practiced something called the Challenger Sale. The idea was simple: lead with data, challenge assumptions, and be honest about outcomes. Sometimes that meant telling clients, “If you don’t do this, and your competitors do, you’re going to fall behind.”

That framework has stuck with me, and it applies directly to markets today.

As we head into 2026, one of the biggest questions investors face isn’t whether AI carries risk (it clearly does) but whether not participating at all is the bigger risk. Technology, capital, and business models are evolving rapidly, and staying on the sidelines comes with its own cost.

In business school, we call this opportunity cost: the value you give up by choosing one option over another. For example if you parked money in a high-interest savings account instead of investing in a semiconductor ETF like SMH last year, the opportunity cost would have been more than a 40% return. That gap compounds over time, just ask Buffett.

This isn’t just a retail investor concern. JPMorgan Chase recently told Bloomberg that one of their biggest risks right now is not having exposure to transformational technologies like artificial intelligence. They understand the risks, but as competition intensifies, they know exposure matters.

You can apply that same mindset to your own financial journey. Compare your growth to the world around you….inflation and housing anybody? But also the companies being built, the capital being deployed, and the technologies reshaping entire industries.

At Wall Street Game Notes, our goal isn’t to tell anyone what to buy or sell. It’s to help you think clearly about markets, technology, and opportunity. As we kick off 2026, we’ve got a packed lineup of content from CES coverage featuring Jensen Huang at NVIDIA and Lisa Su at AMD, to updated AI theses, economic data, Fed commentary, and big-tech earnings.

Markets will always have risk. The real question is whether you’re positioning yourself thoughtfully or opting out entirely.

Be good.