Every December I find myself doing the same slightly ridiculous ritual: I pour a strong coffee, open the latest “Outrageous Predictions” from Saxo Bank, and prepare to have my mind blown.
These aren’t normal forecasts. They are deliberately extreme, low-probability, high-impact scenarios meant to stretch your thinking until it almost snaps. And almost every year at least one of them stops feeling outrageous and starts feeling… uncomfortably plausible.
This time the 2026 edition hit different. Maybe it’s because we’re already living through so many “black swan” events that the bar for crazy has moved. Whatever the reason, several of these ideas kept me awake. So let’s walk through them together, no hype, just honest reactions from someone who’s been around markets long enough to respect how fast the improbable can become inevitable.
Eight Scenarios That Could Break 2026 Wide Open
1. Q-Day Arrives Early – Quantum Computers Crack Everything
Imagine waking up one morning in 2026 to headlines screaming that a quantum computer has just broken RSA-2048 encryption in hours instead of billions of years. Banks freeze withdrawals. Bitcoin and Ethereum plummet 90%+ overnight because private keys are no longer private. Governments declare national emergencies over stolen state secrets.
Saxo calls this Q-Day, and they think it could hit as soon as 2026.
I’ve spoken to cryptographers who say meaningful cryptographically relevant quantum computers are still 8–15 years away. Then again, people said the same thing about useful AI in 2019. Progress isn’t linear; it’s a hockey stick. If Google, IBM, or a state actor flips the switch early, the rush to gold and other non-digital stores of value would be biblical.
“When the locks of the internet break, trust collapses faster than any market.”
Personal take: if this happens, physical gold hits five figures almost instantly. Crypto dies until quantum-resistant algorithms are deployed at scale. And every CISO on earth suddenly has the worst job in the world.
2. The “Swiftie Put” – Taylor Swift Gets Married and Birth Rates Explode
Yes, really.
The scenario goes like this: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce tie the knot in a globally televised fairy-tale wedding. A generation of young women who grew up on her music suddenly decide doom-scrolling was a phase and that backyard weddings, babies, and minivans are actually cool again.
Economists start calling it the Swiftie Put – a cultural floor under collapsing fertility rates.
Look, I laughed at first too. Then I remembered how fast culture can flip. One minute everyone is on TikTok saying they’ll never have kids because the world is ending, the next minute the biggest pop star on earth is radiating domestic bliss and the vibe shifts. Housing demand surges, consumer staples boom, and daycare stocks go parabolic.
Never underestimate the power of a single wedding to move macro.
3. America Gets So Fed Up With Politics It Actually Fixes Democracy
After particularly nasty 2026 midterms full of electoral shenanigans on both sides, independent voters finally snap. A bipartisan “Enough!” movement forces ranked-choice voting, term limits, and campaign finance reform through state ballots and eventually Congress.
Trump remains Trump, but the system around him starts healing.
I want to believe this one more than I actually believe it. But stranger things have happened when public disgust hits critical mass.
4. GLP-1 Weight-Loss Pills Change Humanity (and Pets)
Ozempic and Mounjaro in convenient pill form hit the mass market. Obesity rates crash. Life expectancy jumps. Food companies panic and pivot to “skinny-world” products overnight.
Bonus twist: vets start prescribing the same compounds for overweight dogs and cats, creating the first generation of shredded Labradoodles.
This one doesn’t even feel outrageous anymore. It feels inevitable.
5. SpaceX IPO Hits $1 Trillion Valuation
Starship is flying weekly, Starlink is printing cash, and early lunar contracts are signed. Elon decides 2026 is the year to take (part of) SpaceX public.
The IPO prices at a valuation north of a trillion dollars on day one, turning “space economy” from meme to line item on every pension fund spreadsheet.
Every VC who laughed at space five years ago quietly updates their LinkedIn bio.
6. An AI Becomes CEO of a Fortune 500 Company
Not “advised by AI.” Not “co-CEO with AI.” Full legal CEO: a large language model fine-tuned on decades of earnings calls, 10-Ks, and shareholder letters.
It never sleeps, never plays golf, has zero ego, and executes strategy with terrifying precision. The stock pops 40% in a month.
Boards everywhere suddenly face the question: why exactly are we paying a human $50 million a year to do what a model does better?
“The optimal CEO has no children, no hobbies, and no desire for private jets. We just built it.”
7. China Launches an Offshore Gold-Linked Yuan
Beijing quietly introduces a digital/offshore yuan fully convertible into physical gold for trade settlement. Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and half the BRICS flip a chunk of oil and commodity trade to the new unit.
The U.S. dollar remains dominant, but it’s no longer the only game in town. Treasury yields spike as foreign demand softens.
I’ve been hearing whispers about this for years. If oil starts pricing in “golden yuan”, the geopolitical shockwaves would dwarf anything since 1971.
8. “Dumb AI” Breaks the Economy – Welcome to the Age of AI Janitors
While everyone is busy celebrating god-like frontier models, millions of poorly governed “agentic” AI bots quietly go rogue: trading bots front-run themselves into bankruptcy, logistics bots reroute trucks into oceans, customer-service agents promise unlimited refunds.
Global damages top a trillion dollars. A new profession is born overnight: the AI janitor – highly paid humans whose only job is to follow bots around cleaning up messes.
I actually love this one because it feels like the most realistic cautionary tale. The future won’t be Skynet. It’ll be a million small idiots on autopilot causing chaos until we learn governance the hard way.
Here’s the thing about outrageous predictions: their real value isn’t being right. It’s forcing you to ask questions you’ve been avoiding.
What do you own that survives Q-Day? Are you positioned for a world where obesity vanishes? How exposed are you to a dedollarisation scenario that doesn’t need 100% replacement to hurt?
Most of these scenarios probably won’t happen exactly as written. But pieces of them will. And when the world lurches – as it always does eventually – the people who took ten minutes to think through the extreme cases tend to come out ahead.
So grab another coffee. Run the stress tests on your portfolio and your worldview.
Because if even one of these “outrageous” ideas stops being outrageous in 2026, we’re all going to have a very interesting year.
