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Road Map Review (2025)
- The Time Factor
- Jan 18
- 4 min read
U.S. equity markets had one of their strongest years this decade with stock market prices rising over 20% from the lows in April.
The year marked the third consecutive of double digit gains, largely driven by resilient corporate earnings and gains in technology stocks resulting from the AI driven boom. We posted about Nividia on this website
Our 2025 Road Map at the Time Factor produced one of the most accurate performances in recent years.
Despite the volatility early in the year, the Road Map suggested a year of strong gains, particularly in the second half of the year. In fact, we informed our readers of a "buying opportunity in April", which came about on 7th April right as the Road Map had suggested.
"Any buying opportunities that present themselves in early April should be taken advantage of."
We also made a forecast for a strong second half of the year for U.S. equities, and this certainly did not disappoint.
A copy of the Road Map that we published on 5 January 2025 can be found below. The green line represents our Road Map forecast whereas the black line represents the actual daily price moves of the Dow Jones measured against our Road Map forecast.
As you can see below, the theme of the Road Map for 2025 was for a reasonably slow start to the year but buying opportunities into early April before an expected and sustained long rally of prices for most of the year.
Whilst the volatility early in 2025 was more than anticipated, it did not detract from the guidance that we were looking for early April to present a buying opportunity with the remainder of the market allowing us an opportunity to 'set and forget' our positions. We actually purchased a number of ETF index funds exactly on 7 April 2026 in both the S&P500 and Nasdaq as well as an ASX 200 ETF which we continue to hold today.
One of the additional features that we offer with our annual Road Map forecast is a Microsoft Excel file containing the daily calculations for the entire year. This tool allows you to track the daily movement in the Dow Jones and measure it against the Road Map daily. The charts will automatically update once you enter in the daily close of the Dow Jones and provides you with an ongoing map to measure against the Road Map.
Importantly, the data allows you to rebase the Road Map at certain parts of the year and update the Road Map chart for volatile moves in U.S. equities. The chart below highlights how the Road Map pricing index tracked against the actual Dow Jones index in the second half of the year (actually, from 1 June 2025 to be exact). As you can see below, the Road Map tracked almost identically to the price moves in the Dow Jones over the last seven months of the year.
There were a few things which our Road Map allowed us to take advantage of last year.
Firstly, it gave us a signal not to panic during the early part of 2025 when the market was losing its mind over "Liberation Day" and Trump's proposed trade tariffs. As the market was panicking, we saw this as an opportunity to get ourselves set - entering the market on 7 April, which just happened to be the exact day of the low for the year. This wasn't a fluke.
We made several posts about this on our website, including this one titled 'Is now the time to buy?' which we published on - yes, you guessed it - 7 April 2025. A link to the article can be found here.
We also wrote about the AI sell off and why it wasn't a reason to panic early in the year. The semi conductor ETFs actually represented one of the strongest trades for the year, particuarly the price moves in Nividia, which we specfically wrote about, which you can re-read here.
So what does this say for 2026?
Well, I can tell you this much. It is our view that 2026 will represent one of the most challenging years to trade and/or position your portfolios for the entire decade. It is going to be a difficult period with a number of war cycles commencing this year. This does not necessarily mean doom and gloom for the markets, but the war cycles are the precursors for some major structural market forces to occur.
I will be using the 2026 Road Map to manage my ETF positions carefully, but have already laid out my 2027 Road Map forecast which I will fine tune toward the end of the year once the short term time cycles reveal themselves during the course of 2026.
I'll also be looking to post some ideas over the next few weeks on a number of different markets that includes prancing horses, streaming TV, edamame and a few other ideas that I am following closely. Let's say: "just do it" looks like an interesting motto for 2026.
If you have any thoughts on the markets or some trade ideas that you'd like me to look at, please feel free to put down a comment in the section below.
Until next time...
I recall you mentioning in another post that gold may continue rising into 2027, which seems consistent with your view that 2026 brings structural stress and war cycles. In this environment, given the strong recent rise in silver stocks, do you expect precious-metal equities — particularly silver miners — to continue outperforming this year even if the Dow becomes more challenging?
In your cycle work, do PM equities typically remain correlated with broad equities during late-cycle phases, or do they tend to decouple and outperform as structural stress increases? And does the Road Map timing framework translate well to precious-metal stocks versus the underlying metals themselves?