by Gary Alexander
December 30, 2025
Last week’s revision in GDP statistics revealed a surprisingly robust 4.3% annualized growth rate in the third-quarter, following +3.8% in the second quarter, averaging 4% growth since April 1st. After this GDP report was released, The Wall Street Journal said: “Robust spending by U.S. consumers drove greater-than-expected economic expansion in the third-quarter, and the strongest growth rate in two-years.” At the same time, the Atlanta Fed’s opening GDPNow estimate for fourth-quarter growth is +3%. (They would have submitted several previous estimates, but the hiatus in federal statistics interrupted their forecasts).
Perhaps we can now crow a bit for Louis Navellier’s year-ago prediction of 4% growth in 2025 and 5% in 2026, in our Market Mail for December 24, 2024. Here’s the headline and first paragraph of that report:
“U.S. GDP Will Hit 4% in 2025 – and 5% in 2026, if We Can Grow on All Cylinders”
“The U.S. is one of the few counties in the world that can keep growing due to better demographics. Most of the world is experiencing a population decline, except for Brazil, India and the U.S. We still have some pro-family regions – like the South and Mountain West – so our household formation continues to grow. Furthermore, immigrants are more quickly assimilated in the U.S. than in Europe. This also boosts more household formation. Also, our 50-states are very competitive with one another. They are effectively economic laboratories that can stimulate economic growth as some of the lower-tax business-friendly states – like Florida, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas – have demonstrated. As a result, 5% GDP growth is possible in the U.S. – if we can grow on ‘all cylinders’ by 2026.”
–From Louis Navellier’s Market Mail of December 24, 2024.
At the time, this prediction seemed outlandish to most pundits – especially after the “Trump Tariff Tantrum” last April – but by the end of 2025, Louie’s prediction has gained some favorable press coverage, now that we’ve reached 4% growth and seem on the verge of reaching 5% GDP growth.
It’s astounding (to me) that most of the press reports over the GDP data last week said that this robust growth rate came as a “big surprise” to most economists, but not to us – or to Kevin Hassett, President Trump’s chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). And now, tax cuts from the mid-year spending bill will take effect on January 1, 2026, putting more money in Americans’ pockets.
Massive tax cuts generally deliver outsized growth, as happened after the early 1980s Reagan tax cuts:
This growth spurt tells us: (1) There was never a hint of recession in 1987, and no fundamental cause for the 1987 market crash. (2) A spectacular boom year (like 1984) often begets an election landslide, as happened with Reagan’s 49-state re-election in 1984. And now, if GDP soars in 2026, the Republicans could maintain their control in Congress after next November’s mid-term elections. And (3) This six-year growth spurt in the 1980s did not revive inflation – and inflation should also stay tame throughout 2026.
Now, let’s turn to the source of U.S. economic growth in five great publications from 250-years ago:
The Top 5 Books of 1776 – A Miracle Year in America’s Birth Year
This week, America enters its “semi-quincentennial year.” That’s the clumsy term for a 250th birthday. It literally means “half of 500-years,” a needlessly complex formula. I prefer a “quarter millennium,” but “America at 250” is even better – more easily deciphered than these academic algebraic descriptors.
I’ve just finished a two-part series on the top 10-books of 2025, but nothing will ever top the impact of the top-five books of 1776 – 250-years ago this coming year – so let me start by flying a new year’s flag.
On New Year’s Day 1776, General George Washington – before pulling out of Boston for New York – ordered a new Continental Union flag raised atop Prospect Hill, overlooking Boston harbor. Like the current flag, it featured 13-red and white stripes, but it also had a British ‘look’ in the upper left corner.
At the start of 1776, the American Revolution seemed inevitable, as “rebels commanded each of the 13-colonies. Several royal governors had fled to ships offshore. But People within the colonies remained divided” (from Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns’s book on “The American Revolution,” page 147).
Then, on January 10, Thomas Paine, an Englishman who had just landed in America 14-months prior (in November of 1774) wrote a 47-page pamphlet called “Common Sense,” which became the all-time best-seller in U.S. history, when adjusted for population. With a colonial population of just 2.5-million, over one-million (at least one per household) bought this incendiary pamphlet, which tipped the balance from one-third Loyalist, one-third colonial rebels and one-third neutral – to about 60-30-10 for independence.
Paine’s epochal call to arms was quickly followed by major studies published in Great Britain – Edward Gibbons’ first (of six) volumes of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” a not-so-hidden analogue to the reigning British Empire. Gibbons’ prose seemed to echo the core of Paine’s anti-Royalist views, but emerging from England’s shores. First, Paine wrote, “Hereditary succession is an imposition on posterity…giving mankind an ass for a lion,” then Gibbons echoed: “Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.”
Here are the publication dates for these five earth-shaking publications of 1776:
- January 10: Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense (authored “by an Englishman” in America).
- February 17: Edward Gibbons’ “Decline and Fall,” Volume 1 (of 6), published in England.
- March 9: Scotsman Adam Smith’s economics opus, “An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations”
- June 28 (date presented to Congress): Thomas Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence.”
- December 19: Thomas Paine’s “American Crisis,” on “The times that try men’s souls.”
Most of us educated before the “woke police” took over know the timeless preamble to the Declaration, and Paine’s “American Crisis,” but a brief quote from each ought to impress and inspire us once again:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
– From “The Declaration of Independence,” published July 4, 1776.
Walter Isaacson, a superb biographer, recently wrote a book calling this “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.”
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by in now deserve the love and thanks of man and woman.”
– From “The American Crisis,” published December 19, 1776.
In closing this review, may I recommend three of our greatest novelists who published their first or greatest works precisely 200, 150 and 100-years ago, as measured from the coming year of 2026:
- On February 4, 1826, James Fenimore Cooper published “The Last of the Mohicans.”
- On June 9, 1876: Mark Twain published “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”
- On October 22, 1926, Ernest Hemingway debuted with “The Sun Also Rises.”
This handful of books and pamphlets from U.S. history ought to be part of a reading list for America 250.
All content above represents the opinion of Gary Alexander of Navellier & Associates, Inc.
Also In This Issue
A Look Ahead by Louis Navellier
What Could Go Wrong in 2026?
Income Mail by Bryan Perry
A Year-End Look Under the Market’s AI Hood
Growth Mail by Gary Alexander
U.S. GDP is Now Flirting With 5% Growth Rates in 2026
Global Mail by Ivan Martchev
Knocking on the Door of S&P 7000
Sector Spotlight by Jason Bodner
Santa Claus Arrives – Better Late Than Never
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About The Author
Gary Alexander
SENIOR EDITOR
Gary Alexander has been Senior Writer at Navellier since 2009. He edits Navellier’s weekly Marketmail and writes a weekly Growth Mail column, in which he uses market history to support the case for growth stocks. For the previous 20-years before joining Navellier, he was Senior Executive Editor at InvestorPlace Media (formerly Phillips Publishing), where he worked with several leading investment analysts, including Louis Navellier (since 1997), helping launch Louis Navellier’s Blue Chip Growth and Global Growth newsletters.
Prior to that, Gary edited Wealth Magazine and Gold Newsletter and wrote various investment research reports for Jefferson Financial in New Orleans in the 1980s. He began his financial newsletter career with KCI Communications in 1980, where he served as consulting editor for Personal Finance newsletter while serving as general manager of KCI’s Alexandria House book division. Before that, he covered the economics beat for news magazines. All content of “Growth Mail” represents the opinion of Gary Alexander
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