High Risk

Recent Performance — Last 5 Sessions

Today = vs our Oct 21 mark ($1,474.07). That mark was published to the website on Wednesday; neither Wednesday nor Tuesday, October 20 was emailed or texted, so measured against Monday’s $1,431.36 — the last figure that actually reached you — the book is +0.1%. Live marks (Thu, 7:47 MDT, seventeen minutes after the open, 9:47 Eastern); the daily move is measured against our Oct 21 (Wednesday) published mark. Two sessions were published to the website but not emailed or texted — Tuesday, October 20 and Wednesday, October 21 — so the last figure that actually reached you is Monday’s — three bases today, and all three print. The direction matters, so read it before the numbers: Wednesday’s tape kept rising after we marked at 9:51 Eastern, so Wednesday’s official close landed above our mark. That makes today’s headline, which is measured against our mark, the more flattering of the two readings — your own screen measures from that official close and will look worse than our number. Both readings are printed, for the book and for every position. October MTD is measured from Wednesday Sep 30’s official month-end close. October MTD vs Sep 30 close ($1,733.06). Wednesday’s official close was $1,520.94 — 3.18% above our mark — so on the close basis today is -5.8%. Sessions before Jul 14 reflect the prior book; the current holdings were established at the Jul 14 open.

Baseline note — read this before the headline, and read all three numbers, because one of them will mislead you if you take it alone. Two letters never reached you. Tuesday, October 20 and Wednesday, Oct 21 were both built, audited and published to the website, but no email and no text went out for either. So the last number you actually hold for this book is Monday’s $1,431.36, not Wednesday’s $1,474.07. Harshest first. From Wednesday’s official close of $1,520.94, the basis your own screen uses, the book is -5.8%. From our own Oct 21 mark it is -2.8%. And from the $1,431.36 you were last sent it is +0.1% — essentially flat. That flat reading is the one to be careful with. It is not evidence that nothing has happened. It is a round trip: across the two letters you never received this book rose about 6.3% to $1,520.94, and today it has fallen 5.8%, which nets out near zero. Someone who sees only Oct 19 and today would conclude this book had been still for three sessions. It was not. October is -17.3% and the year -12.4%; those are the figures that describe the month honestly. October MTD is measured against the Sep 30 official month-end close of $1,733 for the current whole-share model. September is locked closed in the monthly table at +19.50%.

Position Scoreboard — Sorted by Portfolio Weight

Today = vs our Oct 21 mark, with the vs-Wednesday’s-close reading beneath it wherever the two differ. Since Fill = vs SOXL $179.62 / TQQQ $75.19 / MSTR $94.78 / BE $205.15 / NBIS $172.19. Weight = % of unit. Live marks (Thu, 7:47 MDT, seventeen minutes after the open, 9:47 Eastern); the daily move is measured against our Oct 21 (Wednesday) published mark. Two sessions were published to the website but not emailed or texted — Tuesday, October 20 and Wednesday, October 21 — so the last figure that actually reached you is Monday’s — three bases today, and all three print. The direction matters, so read it before the numbers: Wednesday’s tape kept rising after we marked at 9:51 Eastern, so Wednesday’s official close landed above our mark. That makes today’s headline, which is measured against our mark, the more flattering of the two readings — your own screen measures from that official close and will look worse than our number. Both readings are printed, for the book and for every position. October MTD is measured from Wednesday Sep 30’s official month-end close.

Portfolio Allocation by Category

Live Track Record — Since January 22, 2026 (Actual)

▲ Current month through today; July, August and September 2026 are locked closed; return measured from the Jan 22, 2026 entry. * Jan–Mar 2026 are estimated partial-period returns carried from our May 2026 updates; they predate our daily archive (begins 15 April 2026) and are shown as estimates, not as-published daily marks. Apr–Sep cells are locked closed from official month-end closes; close-basis restatement pending the anchor review. No backtests, no hypotheticals. Units are price-return; dividends are not accrued.

Calculate Your Position Size

High Risk is marked at $1,433 on the current whole-share model, and the three bases diverge so far today that we are going to put them in order of how bad they are rather than lead with a number that flatters us. From Wednesday’s official close of $1,520.94 — the basis your own screen uses — the book is -5.8%. From our own Oct 21 mark it is -2.8%. And from the $1,431.36 you were last actually sent it is +0.1%, essentially flat — because two letters never went out, Tuesday, October 20 and Wednesday, both published to the website but neither emailed or texted. Do not read that flat number as a quiet week. It is a round trip: across the two letters you did not receive this book rose about 6.3% and today it has fallen 5.8%. October is -17.3% month to date and the year is negative at -12.4%. Those two are the honest summary of where this book stands.

Two chip companies reported last night. Both beat. Both raised. One of them is down nine percent at our mark. That sentence is the whole of today, so here are the actual filings rather than a summary of them. Lam Research reported September-quarter revenue of $8.22 billion, up 22% on the June quarter, with non-GAAP earnings of $2.20 a share, a 52.4% gross margin and a 40.2% operating margin — record revenue, record profit and record earnings per share on the company’s own description — and then guided the December quarter higher on every line: revenue $8.60 billion plus or minus $400 million, gross margin 52.5%, operating margin 40.5%, earnings $2.33 plus or minus $0.15. The shares are down about 9.2% at our mark. Texas Instruments reported revenue of $6.06 billion, up 28% on the year and 11% sequentially, earnings of $2.62 a share against $1.48 a year ago, and guided the fourth quarter to $5.80–6.30 billion with earnings of $2.45–2.79. Its shares are flat. The semiconductor index is 4.15% lower and the Nasdaq-100 1.85% lower.

Read that together and you have the thing that has been wrong with this book all month, stated as plainly as the market has ever stated it: good results no longer move these shares, because the argument is not about demand. We said on October 15, when Anthropic’s quarterly growth halved, that demand and financing were different risks deserving different reactions. Last night was the cleanest test of that available. Demand was not merely fine, it was a record, from the company that sells the equipment the whole build-out runs on, with raised guidance attached. The shares fell nine percent anyway. What is being repriced is the cost of capital behind the build-out, not the order book. SOXL is -9.7% against our Wednesday mark, -12.3% against Wednesday’s close and TQQQ is -3.8% against our Wednesday mark, -5.1% against Wednesday’s close; on a day the chip index fell 4.15% a three-times daily-reset fund should fall around twelve and a half percent, and that is roughly what SOXL did against Wednesday’s close. The arithmetic that has hurt all month still applies: these funds reset exposure every afternoon, so a choppy decline costs far more than three times the index and needs a much larger rally to recover. SOXL is -49.6% since entry.

And this morning one of our own holdings answered the financing question directly, in a filing. Nebius disclosed that on October 17 it entered a $3.5 billion senior secured facility with Citi, announced today. We read the 6-K and the exhibit rather than the coverage, and these are the terms that matter: it is a 364-day facility maturing October 16, 2027; it bears interest at Term SOFR plus 2.75%, rising by 0.25% every 90 days to a maximum of 3.50%; it carries a minimum liquidity covenant; and it is secured on substantially all of the borrowers’ assets, including the shares of the operating subsidiaries. With SOFR at 3.88% that is an all-in cost of about 6.6% today, stepping toward about 7.4% if it is still outstanding in a year. The proceeds go to data-centre development and GPU procurement. NBIS is -3.0% against our Wednesday mark, -5.4% against Wednesday’s close and -5.8% from our fill.

We want to give you both sides of that facility, because the frightening half and the reassuring half are both real and quoting only one would be the easier thing to do. The uncomfortable half: a 364-day maturity on money spent building assets that take years to earn, a margin that ratchets up every quarter it stays outstanding, and a security package over substantially everything, which sits ahead of us as shareholders. A step-up schedule like that is designed to make a borrower refinance quickly, so the honest reading is that this is a bridge to something else rather than settled funding. The reassuring half, and it is not small: Citi was willing to lend $3.5 billion secured at SOFR plus 2.75%, which is an all-in rate near 6.6% — against CoreWeave’s 2031 notes, the market’s benchmark for this sector’s credit, which were yielding roughly 15.5% when we last priced them on Wednesday. Those are different instruments and the comparison is not exact — one is short and secured, the other long and unsecured — but a lender of that size pricing this risk in the sixes tells you something genuine about where Nebius sits in the pecking order. The company also points to more than $40 billion of long-term contracted revenue from investment-grade customers. Meanwhile CoreWeave’s own equity is down about 4.6% at our mark, so the market’s worry about this corner of the market has not eased today.

Now a correction we owe you, and we are repeating it because the letter that first carried it never reached you. On October 19 — the last letter you actually received — we told you that Bloom Energy and Nebius would both report third-quarter results on Thursday, October 22, and we described that as about 27% of this book repricing on one afternoon. Only half of that is correct, and today is that Thursday. Bloom Energy does report after the close today, confirmed by the company in an October 12 release, with a 5:00pm Eastern call, so the reaction lands in tomorrow’s session; analysts look for revenue near $1.06–1.07 billion and the options market has been pricing a double-digit move. Nebius does not report today. We flagged on October 19 that the Nebius date was carried by data providers rather than confirmed by the company, and that caution turned out to be the right one. We checked again this morning: its own investor-events page still reads ‘no upcoming events yet’, there is no filing announcing a date, the only filing it made today is the credit facility above, and the providers have moved their estimate into November 10 while stating the company has not confirmed. Its own history points the same way — it reported the September quarter on November 11 last year. So tonight is a one-name event at 16% of this book, not the 27% we described to you. That is a smaller concentration than we last told you, and we would rather correct it downward than leave the larger number standing because it sounded more cautious. BE is -2.5% against our Wednesday mark, -5.3% against Wednesday’s close.

MSTR crossed a line today that is worth stating on its own. Bitcoin was about $84,550 at Wednesday’s equity close and roughly $81,400 at our mark, down about 3.7%. MSTR is 0.0% against our Wednesday mark, -4.2% against Wednesday’s close — so on the close basis, the one comparable to the asset, the share fell a little more than the bitcoin it holds. Its weight is now 41.0% of this unit against 39.9% on Wednesday. That is the first reading above 40% and the highest in the sixty-seven sessions we have records for since this book was rebuilt on July 14, when it was 26.2% — and every bit of that increase is weight moving through price, not a single share traded. We are naming it because concentration that arrives by drawdown is still concentration: the other four positions falling faster is what lifted it. The dated facts are unchanged: the affected-company list publishes November 11, any exclusion takes effect only after the close on November 30, and an existing member is removed only if it fails the screen in each of its two most recent annual filing periods. We hold four shares, the review of trimming to three is closed, and no trade was made.

Bottom line: High Risk is at $1,433 a unit. All three readings, worst first: -5.8% against Wednesday’s official close, -2.8% against our own Oct 21 mark, and +0.1% against the $1,431.36 you were last sent — which is flat only because the book round-tripped through two letters you never received. October is -17.3% and the year -12.4%. One position flips sign between the two bases today. MSTR is 0.0% against our Wednesday mark, -4.2% against Wednesday’s close. Nothing here is a change of view and nothing was traded. The structure, written down: 32% in two 3x daily-reset funds, 41% in a bitcoin treasury company carrying a dated index risk, and 27% in two AI-infrastructure counterparties, of which only Bloom reports tonight. What we are watching, in order of how much it can move this page: Bloom Energy after today’s close, the only report here tonight; whether Nebius’s bridge gets termed out into longer money and on what terms, which is now a dated question with a 364-day clock on it; CoreWeave’s bond yield, the cleanest read on whether this month’s actual problem is easing; the fact that record chip earnings with raised guidance could not lift this sector, which is the most important thing that happened today; the MSCI affected-company list on November 11 and the November 30 effective date, with MSTR at 41.0%; the Federal Reserve on October 27–28; and the midterms on November 3.

Portfolio Builder | Market Update | Thursday, October 22, 2026

Trade Ledger — Entry & Exit History

Every position we open and close, newest first. Realized P/L on closes is marked against the original entry price.

Entry prices verified against the Jan 22, 2026 cost basis. “Open” = still held today. An entry marked “Closed <date>” was exited in that rotation — its realized result is shown on the CLOSE row for that date. This ledger builds our public track record going forward.