Divine Insights: January 2026 🌟
Early signals from a year that won’t wait.
Dear Divine Clients & Friends ❄️
Happy 2026.
We’ve wasted no time. Markets pushed higher, and the gap between what’s happening in the markets and lived reality widened dramatically. Two weeks in, the tone is set.
For the inaugural Divine Insights of 2026, we touch on all five of our investment themes. We get a little long winded, but please stick with us because all Good Sh*t comes to those who read through to the end!!
Welcome to Divine Insights.
Each month we bring you a compendium of market news and data to assess the forces shaping markets and the economy.
At Divine, we focus on resilient strategy: values-aligned portfolios, global perspective, and clear thinking about wealth, business, and legacy.
This newsletter is for information purposes only & does not contain recommendations to buy or sell any securities.
If you'd like to talk through your own financial picture, I’m here.
Global Lens 🌍
BINGO
Despite (or in spite of) the skepticism of nearly everyone, global markets continued to reach new highs in 2025 and into the dawn of 2026.
January is traditionally a month of aspiration and prognostication. Will markets see yet another double digit gain? Will interest rates settle down and encourage more lending activity? Will we stick to the 5am workouts and ginger shakes every morning? Let’s play bingo!!
Excluding fitness routines, the card below shows top predictions of over 2,000 experts from the likes of Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Deloitte.
Credit: VisualCapitalist.com
As we move into 2026, global news continues to feel brink-ish.
Geopolitical upheaval has increased from just background noise to occupying center stage: the war in Ukraine grinds on, Israel-Gaza remains unresolved and morally searing, Venezuela has crossed from U.S. leader’s rhetoric into direct confrontation under military pressure and blockade, while here at home we’re watching social tensions rise as federal immigration enforcement collides with civilian life in many blue states. It is affecting energy prices, supply chains, defense and infrastructure spending, labor markets, and the psychology of consumers and investors alike.
The euro zone economy grew quicker than most forecasts in 2025, indicating that companies and consumers are adjusting to shocks such as the upending of global trade, but resilience to this point not turning into a boom and most analysts expect only modest expansion this year. The European Central Bank has supported the economy for the past two years with a steady stream of rate cuts and ended a turbulent 2025 with modest growth, a string of data reports showed last week.
The United Nations’ latest World Economic Situation and Prospects sees global growth moderating to about 2.7 % in 2026—slightly below 2025’s estimate and well under the pre-pandemic trend—reflecting ongoing tariff impacts, geopolitical uncertainty, and structural headwinds. Resilient consumer spending and policy support are expected to cushion the slowdown. From the report:
India economic growth forecast at 6.6% for 2026 and 6.7% for 2027 (#1 population 1.464B)
China economic growth forecast at 4.6% in 2026 and 4.5% in 2027 (#2 population 1.461B)
US economic growth forecast at 2.0% in 2026 and 2.2% in 2027 (#3 population 347M)
The Sheconomy 💃
U.S. online holiday spending hit a record $257.8 billion in 2025 (Nov 1–Dec 31), growing 6.8% from 2024. This season, 56.4% of consumers shopped on mobile devices. According to Retail TouchPoints data, E-commerce growth outpaced brick-and-mortar sales by more than 7%.
However, we saw an increase in Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) credit, as reported by Adobe Analytics and Reuters. Increasing BNPL is a yellow flag for us.
U.S. credit card balances remain near record highs at around $1.23 trillion in Q3 2025, up modestly quarter-to-quarter. That’s historically large debt, and growth of credit card balances has softened compared with the rapid post-pandemic run.
Stress pockets such as older borrowers or subprime users as well as alternative credit use (BNPL) suggest the consumer is digging deeper into different credit tools rather than showing clean balance-sheet health.
Policy and market response in flux: calls to cap credit card interest rates at 10 % reflect political pressure on affordability, but banks warn this could shrink credit availability and push marginal borrowers toward riskier financing.
This week, as government economic reporting returns to its regular cadence following the shutdown, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows inflation still running above the Fed’s 2% target but no longer accelerating — reinforcing a wait-and-watch policy stance. The Producer Price Index (PPI) confirms that upstream cost pressures remain in place, suggesting inflation may linger longer than markets had hoped. For households this translates into continued pressure on everyday budgets. Just because they say ‘prices have come down’ on TV doesn’t make it true.
Analysis of the December 2025 jobs report showed that 91,000 women left the workforce that month, while 10,000 men joined. Throughout 2025, men joined the labor force at three times the rate of women (a gain of 572,000 men vs. 184,000 women). IYKYK, this does not bode well for the economy.
⚡ Connectivity ⚡
AI infrastructure is beginning to fund itself. Infrastructure providers, like chip maker Nvidia (NVDA), are investing in their customers, who then turn around and buy more of the infrastructure providers’ products. Nvidia did a $6.3 billion deal with AI data center firm CoreWeave (CRWV). Coreweave is a customer of Nvidia and Nvidia owns a 7% equity stake in CoreWeave. And then there’s Nvidia’s $2 billion investment in its customer xAI. Additionally, OpenAI's own deals with Oracle (ORCL), CoreWeave (CRWV), and chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) as well as their deals with OpenAI.
Here's a simple chart to explain further:
Chart: AI ecosystem capital flows (Morgan Stanley Research)
Oh, what a tangled web we weave…*
The same pattern is spreading across the ecosystem. OpenAI relies on infrastructure from CoreWeave (CRWV) and Oracle (ORCL) while also working with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), tightening the web between capital, computing power, and control. A recent compilation of transactions from Reuters found here shows megacaps and startups are no longer just partners or customers — they are becoming financially interdependent systems.
Meanwhile, up in space…Planet Labs (PL) continues to earn its place among our more speculative holdings. The stock is up more than 600%, and we trimmed 25% of clients’ positions last week for risk discipline.
What’s driving the momentum is the business model. PL’s “Satellites-as-a-Service” strategy has pushed their backlog up 216% year-over-year to $734.5 million, as sovereign clients stop buying imagery and start renting private space programs. The recent $230 million JSAT deal is a clean example: Japan gets sovereign satellite capability without the cost, complexity, or risk of building and launching its own constellation. PL announced this week they secured a multi-year low 9-figure agreement with the Swedish Armed Forces to deliver a suite of satellites, space-based data, and awareness solutions.
The economics flip the script. Instead of PL fronting all the capex (capital expenditures) and hoping demand shows up, anchor customers fund the asset up front. PL still feeds the data back into its global archive and resells it at near-zero marginal cost. Capital-light. Highly scalable.
Wellness 💊
A new dedicated experience (ChatGPT Health) is launching which aims to connect medical records and wellness apps, helping people navigate their personal health data more intelligently — a sign that personalized digital wellness tools are becoming part of mainstream health navigation.
GLP-1 medications have been hailed as a weight-loss miracle drug and are used to treat a variety of conditions beyond just obesity and type 2 diabetes, with potential impacts on heart health, kidney disease, fertility, arthritis, and even addiction. According to KFF, around one in five U.S. adults have used GLP-1 drugs, and user rates continue to climb as costs go down.
Novo Nordisk (NVO) is down roughly 36% year-over-year, reflecting the market’s reassessment after an extraordinary run: manufacturing constraints, pricing and political scrutiny, and the shift from scarcity-driven upside to execution risk.
Eli Lilly (LLY), up about 35.6% over the same period, has been rewarded for faster capacity expansion, stronger next-gen data, and a pipeline that extends beyond GLP-1s.
The USDA and HHS have renewed their focus on nutrition with the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans, signaling a more explicit shift toward food as medicine. Nutrition is no longer a lifestyle sidebar; it’s being reframed as a core lever in addressing a worsening chronic disease epidemic. A few of Divine’s clients have been business leaders in this space for YEARS, and are finally getting their well deserved spotlight.
As this thinking moves from guidance into policy and reimbursement, the implications for the snack and soda industry are structurally negative — much like the pressure GLP-1s have already applied to demand, behavior, and margins. As an ‘ingredients-house’ parent, I applaud!
Image credit: Realfood.gov
Power 🔋 (energy, grid, resilience)
If you build it, they will...wait.
The grid is being asked to do more than it was built for — faster than it can be upgraded. The EIA (Energy Information Administration) continues to project record U.S. electricity demand in both 2025 and 2026, driven by:
AI data centers
Electrification (EVs, heat pumps, industrial load)
Population and regional load growth (Sun Belt)
The market narrative has moved from generation to delivery. Power isn’t scarce, but the capacity to move and manage it is. The backlog of proposed power plants (all sources-solar, wind, nat gas, etc.) that have submitted grid connection requests is larger than ever. As of the end of 2024, which is the most recent data available, there were ~10,300 projects actively seeking grid interconnection in the U.S., representing 1,400 GW of generation and approximately 890 GW of storage. For context, total U.S. installed power capacity today is just over 1,300 GW. The combination of 1,400 GW of generation and 890 GW of storage represents an energy system roughly the size of the entire current U.S. grid — plus a storage layer large enough to fundamentally change reliability, peak pricing, and grid resilience.
This traffic jam is mired in regulatory, permitting and transparency issues. These days, renewables are being framed as risk mitigation, and not energy transition.
A number of transmission and transformer companies are on Divine’s watch list, but we continue to add to our NextEra Energy (NEE) position. With a dividend track record of 30 consecutive years, NEE is the largest renewable energy developer in the U.S., with assets and development activity in nearly all 48 contiguous states through its competitive arm, NextEra Energy Resources. Operating across almost the entire U.S., NextEra builds faster and cheaper than their peers. That scale matters as transmission, interconnection, and equipment bottlenecks slow smaller developers. Storage pairing turns intermittent generation into usable capacity, which is what grids actually need.
Now the some good stuff:
Good Sh*t 📚
A shot of good news
Kouma no asagake (駒の朝駆け)
A Japanese proverb meaning “a foal’s morning gallop,” kouma no asagake is a caution against explosive starts that lack stamina — enthusiasm without endurance. It’s often used to describe the Year of the Fire Horse, which appears only once every 60 years. Fire Horse years carry intensity: people feel compelled to take bold swings, make decisive choices, pursue long-held ambitions, and chart their own paths. The risk is burnout. The opportunity is momentum with discipline.If you’re curious how to work with that energy rather than against it, The 2026: The Fire Horse Year by my friend Ana Barreto offers a practical, soulful roadmap for aligning your space, intentions, and timing.
You can also explore what the Fire Horse year may hold for you personally by Chinese zodiac sign via Harper's Bazaar Singapore.
A Sin to Know
On a more personal note, my husband Terence Patrick Hughes has released his first novel, A Sin to Know, following a career that includes more than 30 plays written and produced across five continents, along with dozens of published short stories. Brutally tense and impossible to put down, it asks a question that lingers long after the last page: how far would we go for the flawed people we love?
Parting Thoughts ❄️
This is a market being held together by systems that are under strain — power, credit, labor, health, and information. We trim when discipline demands it, add where fundamentals earn it, and ignore noise that doesn’t alter the long-term view.
I’d love to hear what’s on your mind as you look ahead — questions, concerns, or ideas you’re exploring.
*‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!’ Is from Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion. This was a fun rabbit hole to go down.💛
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