Three quarters into 2026, the market has already delivered double-digit gains — despite plenty of volatility along the way.
But there’s more yet to come.
And I’m not saying that because of sentiment, politics or wishful thinking. It’s the economic data.
U.S. exports are growing far faster than imports, the trade deficit has narrowed sharply, and Andrew believes more production is beginning to move back onto American soil. That means more economic activity at home — and potentially more jobs, higher wages and stronger corporate profits.
This shift is still in its early stages — and that’s precisely why he’s already forecasting another 15% year for stocks in 2027.
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Welcome to Moneyball Economics. I’m your host, Andrew Zatlin.
Here we are three quarters of the way through the year, and it has been incredibly volatile getting here, which is what you expect when Trump’s in charge, right? He is Mr. Volatility.
In fact, last year when he came to town, I made two predictions. One, that the stock market was going to go up 15%, and two, that it would be a rocky ride because Mr. Volatility was in charge. Well, both of those predictions were right. In fact, the stock market went up 17%, a little bit more than my prediction, and it was very volatile getting there.
At the beginning of this year, I made a similar prediction. I said again, we were going to get 15% growth in the stock market and it would be a rocky ride getting there. Here we are three quarters of the year through, and we’re what, 12, 13% returns in the stock market so far, and that’s with three months to go.
I’m going to go ahead and give you my prediction for next year, 2027. Again, it’s going to be a repeat, another year of 15% growth, and it’s going to be volatile getting there. So over the course of the year, I kept saying when it would go down, these were great buy opportunities, and I hope you have position for that.
Remember, I’m an economist. I’m data driven. I’m not pulling these predictions out of thin air. This is very much driven by what I’m seeing in the economy going forward and where the economy goes, the stock market follows. I understand that not everybody’s as bullish as I am.
I understand that a lot of people look out the window. They see clouds out there. They see inflation, interest rates going up, they see the election, and they walk away with a lot of doom and gloom.
Well, folks, you shouldn’t feel doom and gloom.
When I look out the window, I see blue skies, and I want to share with you a very foundational piece of economic information that makes me bullish. And it really translates into a couple basic things. The US economy is growing and it’s growing in very healthy ways that are going to translate next year into more jobs and more wages and a stronger stock market.
What I’m focused on is basic economics. Are we selling more than we buy? And one way to measure that is are we exporting more and importing less? Because if you’re selling more than you’re buying, you’re building wealth. That’s the secret of success out there.
And for a country, well, look at China, they export more than they import and they’re building massive wealth. It’s growing jobs and all that great stuff. For the US though, we’re not on the same trajectory and we haven’t been for a while.
See, we buy more than we sell. And to make that happen, we have to borrow a lot of money. And right now the US is carrying 40 something trillion dollars of debt and it’s eating us alive. Every dollar of tax that comes in, about 23, 24 cents is going just to pay off this debt. I’d rather see that money go off paying for healthcare, food, roads, you name it.
Well, Donald Trump, when he came to town, instituted industrial policy, shall we say, and it took a couple of forms, one of which was tariffs. The other which was, well, basically arm twisting.
A year and a half later, I’d like to share with you how successful that has been. Let’s talk about what’s going on with the export story and what’s going on with the import story, because we are now on the path of building wealth, the wealth that creates jobs, that creates raises, that stimulates the economy and the stock market.
Okay. In the year to date, which goes through July, the latest data, so about half of the year, our exports have grown $188 billion. So if you extrapolate that for the whole year, our exports have grown about $350 billion in one year.
Why is that so important? Well, that’s a lot of extra economic activity.
That’s a lot of jobs needed to create all of that extra stuff that we’re selling. $350 billion. We may even hit $400 billion of additional economic activity, but that’s not only where the story starts and ends.
Let’s talk imports because that’s really interesting. Imports, well, very similar. Imports have gone from growing every year, every year, every year to suddenly year to date, pretty much flat. We’ve imported only $24 billion. Again, halfway through the year, exporting $188 billion more compared to last year, importing a little $24 billion up. But it’s more interesting when we dive into the detail.
We have imported year to date, again, about half the year, about $90 billion less of pharmaceutical products. Now, is that because we’re healthier? No, it’s not because we’re healthier.
It’s because Donald Trump arm twisted the big pharmaceutical producers like Eli Lilly and said, “Make that here.”
So that $90 billion drop in imports, well, it’s actually $90 billion more that we’re manufacturing. So go back to the exports, $400 billion more roughly that we’re producing. Well, pharmaceuticals, 90 billion more that we’re producing in just the year to date. So almost $200 billion of additional economic activity because we’re not importing, we’re making it here.
And it doesn’t start and stop there.
Another 80, $90 billion in the year to date because we’re making metal stuff here. We’re importing a lot less. This just keeps adding up and up and up. In essence, half a trillion dollars going up to $600 billion of additional economic activity is taking place in the United States compared to last year and compared to the year before and so on and so forth.
The only reason our imports are flat and not going down has to do with AI. We’re importing almost $350 billion worth of computer stuff to enable AI. But there again, the story is shifting. Donald Trump is arm twisting a lot of other countries. He’s trying to get semiconductors manufactured more here. He’s trying to get a lot of the computer products manufactured more here.
So right now we have an economy that is growing rapidly and is set to continue to grow rapidly. And when you’ve got an economy that’s actually growing because actual activity’s taking place and not because, oh, prices are up or whatever, well, that means a lot more jobs are being created.
That means a lot more infrastructure is being built out. And you can imagine that what it also means is with this huge activity, your wages and salaries are going to go up and American businesses are making a lot more money, which means the stock market’s going to go up.
This is actual data. We are witnessing a major, major sea change in the US economy. But what’s fascinating is, again, not everybody sees these positives.
Not everybody is aware of this massive sea change, but they will be. Within about three to six months, it’s going to become so freakishly obvious how strong the US economy is, and you’re going to start to see all these hedge funds change their positions.
When I say that the interest rates went up and some people are negative, what you need to understand is interest rates went up because the US economy’s moving up.
It’s a good thing. And that’s what the hedge funds are going to start to recognize is that right now they’re concerned about inflation and interest rates and all of a sudden they’re going to realize it really is a blue sky scenario and they’re going to jump back into the stock market even harder.
You need to buckle up, you need to get incredibly long in the stock market because there’s only good times ahead. We’re in it to win it folks.
Zatlin out.
Andrew Zatlin
Editor, Moneyball Economics