Investment Trends Set to Dominate 2026

 

 

Best-Selling Finance Author Reveals the Investment Trends Set to Dominate 2026 – and why chasing them might be the wrong strategy…by Gary Ashworth

 

Everyone wants to know what’s going to happen in 2026.  

Will crypto bounce back from its 50% drop? Will gold give back its gains? Will AI stocks continue their run or finally correct? 

 

As an over-confident investor once told me glibly: “It’s easy to make money, you just have to predict the future and be right.” 

After 30 years of building businesses and investment portfolios, my honest answer is that I don’t know. And neither does anyone else who pretends that they do. 

What I do know is that the trends dominating 2026 are creating precisely the right kind of market volatility that systematic investors can exploit. Not by predicting which way they’ll break, but by using proven principles that work regardless. 

 

The Trends Everyone’s Watching

 

The Crypto Correction – Digital assets have fallen roughly 50% from peak. True believers say it’s a buying opportunity, but sceptics say it’s going to half again. Both can’t be right, but both sides are equally confident. 

The Gold Question – Precious metals have surged recently as investors fled uncertainty. Now the question is whether that flight to safety will reverse when confidence returns. 

The AI Hype Cycle – Some say we’re in an early innings situation, whilst others say it’s 1999 dot-com bubble all over again. 

Tax Migration – High net worth individuals are relocating to low-tax or zero-tax jurisdictions. This isn’t a prediction – it’s already happening at scale. 

The challenge to profit from any of these trends is that you need to be right about timing, direction and magnitude. That’s not investing. That’s gambling. You might as well just go to the casino. 

 

The Wrong Lens

 

I believe that most investors are looking at life through the wrong lens. They just want to do a little better this year than they did last year. 

I don’t think that’s the right strategy. Instead, they should be asking themselves “How can I use what’s happening in the world today to double my stake and then, in time double it again? 

 

The Mathematics Everyone Ignores

 

Most of us forget that you only have to double £100,000 ten times to make £10 million. 

Ten good decisions in your lifetime. At three years per cycle, that’s thirty years to achieve financial security for life. 

But you don’t need to predict trends. You need to exploit the volatility those trends create. 

And if buy assets using debt, that makes things easier still. 

If you buy a business you can add value to, or buy a property you can improve, then things get much less risky. If you use debt or a mortgage at a sensible level – for most assets, the 66% sweet spot is about right, so two-thirds borrowed money, one-third yours – then the asset only needs to increase 33% for you to double your stake. 

You don’t need the property to double in value. You don’t need the business to explode in growth. A sensible 33% increase – achievable through modest market appreciation or genuine improvements you make – doubles your equity. 

That’s controllable. That’s not gambling. 

 

What Can You Actually Improve?

 

Business, for most people,  isn’t like sitting watching your favourite football team at the weekend, hoping they’ll win. You need to buy things you can actually influence and get your hands dirty. 

Clever people have been doing this for thousands of years 

The spice traders of the Middle East, the robber barons of America Carnegie, Rockefeller, JP Morgan and more recently, private equity firms have learned the same thing – they get work done through others. They don’t run businesses themselves day-to-day, but they do have influence, and they back strong management teams. 

You can do exactly the same thing at smaller scale  

 

The 2026 Opportunities Nobody’s Talking About

 

While everyone obsesses over crypto and gold, I’m quietly searching for: 

 

Management Fatigue Sales – Businesses where founders have run out of energy. They’re selling not because the business is broken but because they’re exhausted. That’s a buying opportunity if you can inject fresh energy into their methodology. 

AI-Enhanced Traditional Businesses – Instead of trying to pick the next AI unicorn. I look for boring businesses where AI tools can genuinely cut costs or improve margins. 

Post-Correction Assets – When crypto corrects, or gold gives back gains, watch for quality assets sold by panicking owners. The best time to buy is when fear is highest. 

 

The System That Works

 

Identify tangible assets you can: 

 

• Buy below replacement cost because volatility has created temporary mispricing 
• Improve through better management or operational changes 
• Finance at the 66% leverage sweet spot 
• Hold for three-year minimum cycles 
• Sell when you’ve doubled your equity 

 

Private equity firms do this at billion-dollar scale. You can do it starting with £10,000 or £100,000.

 

Why This Works in Any Market

 

It’s just maths, it doesn’t require you to be right about 2026’s trends. It works whether crypto goes to zero or hits new highs. Whether gold corrects or continues climbing. 

Because you’re not betting on external factors you can’t control. You’re betting on your ability to identify mispriced assets, add genuine value, use leverage properly, and hold through volatility. 

 

The Unsexy Conclusion

 

Trends dominating headlines won’t make you wealthy. Often, trying to predict them will make you poorer. 

What will make you rich is the same thing that’s made people rich for thousands of years: buying assets below intrinsic value, improving them systematically, using leverage intelligently, and selling when you’ve extracted the gain. 

Then doing it again. 

Ten doubles. Thirty years, (assuming 3 years per double) will lead to financial security for life. 

It’s boring. It’s unglamorous. But it works. 

 

My Actual 2026 Prediction

 

Market volatility in 2026 will create exceptional opportunities for systematic investors who aren’t distracted by trying to predict which trend wins. I hope that you become one of them. 

 

Gary Ashworth is Chairman of Albany Beck and author of “Double Up Money Mastery,” and runs Dumm.org, which teaches entrepreneurs how to build serious wealth through systematic doubling strategies.