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I FTSE 100 i can’t stop climbing. But that doesn’t mean some of our biggest companies won’t endure the nightmare of 2026. The question is, which ones are likely to have the greatest value?
For giggles, I posted this on ChatGPT. And the answer was… ahem… lovely.
Will these FTSE 100 villains struggle in 2026?
In a matter of seconds, an AI bot came up with the top four stocks that look like they are in danger of crashing this year.
- A banking giant NatWest Group.
- Dunhill and owner of Lucky Strike British American cigars.
- A silver and gold miner Fresnillo.
- The bellwether of retail The next one (LSE: NXT).
At NatWest Group, it cited the recent rise in bank ratings and the possibility of a UK recession as potential risks. The bot then highlights the ongoing regulatory pressures on British American tobacco and the decline in traditional tobacco sales. As for Fresnillo, it talked about the possibility of precious metal prices going back after the dreaded 2025.
So far, ‘meh’. None of the above is quite revealing.
The fact that ChatGPT chose Next, however, made me laugh. The timing couldn’t have been worse.
Beating expectations
The same day I answered my question about the AI bot (January 6), the company released its latest trading update. And the market destroyed it!
Famous for under-promising and over-delivering, the £17bn-cap has rightly announced a better-than-expected 10.6% rise in full-price sales for the nine weeks to 27 December. Put another way, Next had a much better Christmas than analysts expected. As a result, full-year pre-tax profit guidance was raised (again) to £1.15bn.
Now, this does not mean that the following stocks will not crash in the coming months. It’s probably true that most good news seems baked in.
Even before yesterday’s update, the stock changed hands at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 19 following a major dividend in 2025. A dip in UK consumer spending may prompt some investors to bank profits and move on. And all bets are off if there’s some kind of significant national development that the markets really don’t like.
Don’t trust the bot
Of course, an AI bot doesn’t know better than us when it comes to predicting which stocks will boom, bomb or trade sideways. Accurately predicting stock price movements with any degree of accuracy in the near term is extremely difficult. And do you do that consistently? Well, that’s almost impossible.
To be fair, ChatGPT said it cannot predict which stocks will crash, only where the risk is concentrated. The problem is that it then chose four very different businesses! It doesn’t help.
And that’s exactly why we’re long-term investors in Fool UK. We don’t try to guess how the market will move or make a killing before lunch, We rush to grow our money slowly but surely over years and decades. That is done through careful analysis and awareness of individual financial goals and tolerances, not AI.
So while it will be interesting to see if – with any luck – the bot comes trumpeting at the end of 2026, I won’t push it any further.
But I keep the powder dry when bargains come up. Actually, I think a few already have!
