The FTSE 100 can’t stop rising. But that doesn’t mean some of our biggest companies won’t endure a nightmare 2026. The question is, which are most likely to tank in value?
For a giggle, I posed this to ChatGPT. And it’s reply was… ahem… interesting.
Will these FTSE 100 stunners struggle in 2026?
In the matter of a few seconds, the AI bot came up with four top-tier stocks that look vulnerable to crashing this year.
- Banking giant NatWest Group.
- Dunhill and Lucky Strike owner British American Tobacco.
- Silver and gold miner Fresnillo.
- Retail bellwether Next (LSE: NXT).
For NatWest Group, it spoke of the recent spike in the bank’s valuation and the possibility of a downturn in the UK economy as potential risks. The bot then highlighted ongoing regulatory pressures for British American Tobacco and the decline in sales of traditional cigarettes. As far as Fresnillo was concerned, it talked about the possibility of precious metal prices sharply retracing after a terrific 2025.
So far, so ‘meh’. None of the above is exactly revelatory.
The fact that ChatGPT selected Next, however, made me chuckle. Its timing couldn’t have been worse.
Beating expectations
On the same day that I ran my question by the AI bot (6 January), the company released its latest trading update. And the market lapped it up!
Famed for under-promising and over-delivering, the £17bn-cap duly 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 far better Christmas than analysts were expecting. As a result, guidance on full-year pre-tax profit was raised (again) to £1.15bn.
Now, this doesn’t mean Next shares won’t crash in the months ahead. It’s probably true that a lot of good news looks baked in.
Even before yesterday’s update, the stock changed hands at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 19 following a stonking gain in 2025. A dip in UK consumer spending could prompt some investors to bank profits and move on. And all bets are probably off if there’s some kind of significant geopolitical development that markets really don’t like.
Don’t trust the bot
Of course, an AI bot doesn’t know any better than us when it comes to predicting which stocks will thrive, bomb or trade sideways. Correctly predicting share price movements to any degree of precision in the near term is incredibly hard. And doing that consistently? Well, that’s pretty much impossible.
To be fair, ChatGPT did say that it can’t predict which stocks will crash, only where risk is concentrated. The problem is that it then proceeded to pick out four very different businesses! Unhelpful.
And this is exactly why we’re long-term investors at Fool UK. We’re not trying to second-guess imminent market moves or make a killing before lunch, We’re obsessed with growing our money slowly but surely over years and decades. That’s done through careful analysis and awareness of individual financial goals and tolerance, not AI.
So while it’ll be fascinating to see whether — by sheer luck — the bot comes up trumps by the end of 2026, I’m not going to take it any further than that.
But I am keeping some powder dry for when bargains do appear. Actually, I think a few already have!
